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Author: Camacan

Dec 11th 2008 at 8:47:31 PM

"In-universe" is an odd phrase. I think you mean "real world" or 'fiction but not sci-fi or fantasy". Some fantasy and sci-fi takes place in a multiverse so you get out-of-universe stuff, but that's not related.

As for when sci-fi authors find real-world science inconvenient, yes it is usually a particular conclusion that is found wrong for story purposes, not usually the whole method. In reality science is a huge stack of cards: if any of the fundamental theories are wrong, many of the others will be wrong too. And a mountain of observations will need re-explaining -- in a way that produces the features of the old theories and introduces a more fundamental one.

I agree with Professor Thascales: we need to make that distinction. I think they are sometimes linked,deep down: in the real world (or realistic fiction) people who want to invalidate science are often doing so in an attempt to get rid of a scientific discovery they wish was not true; or in order to believe in something they wish to be true that is effectively impossible.

Re-reading the original trope proposal, man there's some scary and debased schools of thought around.

I think ''Distress'' by Greg Egan has characters attempting all three originally mentioned attacks on science, and corresponding defences of science. His repudiation of the notion of science only being valid for white men in Europe is given in a speech by a black South African physicist, who points out that what she and all her colleagues have discovered applies equally to every cubic Planck in the observable universe and that logic doesn't care what gonads you have.

The real-world stuff puts me in mind of "You can't handle the Truth!" from ''A Few Good Men'': power and authority crushing reason and evidence. Or "Two plus two equals five." from ''1984''