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| So you're into sci fi? But what about sci fact? Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction... Each month our very own Voyager Science Queen* will bring you interesting, quirky and downright bizarre tasty morsels from the world of science. And its all completely, totally, 100% true! August Sci-Facts |
Putting the Science into Science Fiction This Science Article is dedicated to So…this is a science fact page. Why? Because Voyager Online is a website for Fantasy and Science Fiction books, and they thought - quite correctly – that there is strong connection between the fact and the fiction. Science Fiction couldn’t exist without science and the Industrial revolution. So, let’s dabble in a little history…the history of hard science. Science, real science, is a fairly modern innovation in our culture. It is typified by a way of thinking about the world: observe the facts, make theories, and then design experiments to test these theories. Your results must be repeatable. If your theory doesn’t fit the facts, it must be incorrect. No arguments. No excuses. You can use your data to predict the future, and you will most certainly be correct: for example, sulphuric acid reacts with most metals in a reaction to produce hydrogen gas and the metal sulphate. I can safely predict that if I pour sulphuric acid over copper, I will get copper sulphate and not a philosopher’s stone. This goes against the traditional or Classical philosophy, where magic or rituals could change the way the world works. Instead of the four Classical elements – water, air, fire and earth – I know that I am made from the chemicals in the Periodic Table of the Elements. I know that space is full of vacuum and that there no such thing as luminiferous aether. I know that magnetism isn’t caused by a lodestone possessing a soul. Proper science started when human beings started to use science to improve their technology. Science and technology aren’t the same thing, by the way, as technology is the application of science to create better tools, creating industry. The Industrial Revolution began in the Nineteenth Century, when manual labour was replaced by new manufacturing method involving machinery. The science behind machinery had been around for centuries. But a major change in the attitudes towards science and machinery meant a greater acceptance of both. The French Enlightenment Movement believed that pure science would improve not just knowledge, buy industry, this would eventually create a better society, and that would lead to better educated, morally good, spiritually pure human beings. Such idealism! The philosophy spread throughout the world, in one form or another. With this change, many innovations began occurring in the research and development of science and its related technologies. Any philosophy has its flip side. The Romantics were opposed to the Enlightenment, believing logic and rationality would drive out individuality and creativity. Strange to say, it was a Romantic, and the daughter of a proponent of the Enlightenment philosophy, that wrote the very first novel where science was extrapolated to create the plot: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mary had read about experiments were electricity had animated the dead flesh of frog’s legs. She drew her own conclusions from these experiments, and spun a horror tale of a mad scientist and his creation of a patchwork man. Her conflicted background, both for and against the advancement of humanity by science, was the perfect breeding ground for her story, the very first Science Fiction novel. Though, of course, no one recognised the genre of Science Fiction until the term was invented in the early Twentieth Century, and popularised by Hugo Gernsback. Even Jules Verne and H G Wells were famous for writing travel stories or science romances (romance meant written in a Romance language, not romantic), not Science Fiction. The whole genre would never have existed except for the Industrial Revolution. Biography of the Month: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Birth Date: August 30, 1797 "You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been." Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the great feminist philosopher and writer, and her husband William Godwin, an English social reformer and the founder of philosophical anarchism. She had an older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who Godwin had adopted. Mary Wollstonecraft had married simply to give her unborn child a legitimate name and social respectability, as she was ethically opposed to the institution of marriage, seeing it as patriarchal method to subjugate women. Sad to say, Wollstonecraft died of ‘childbed fever’ just days after the birth of her daughter, so that the two were never to converse…what a meeting of minds that would have been. Mary’s father was both an enlightened parent, encouraging Mary to read and giving her the run of his extensive library, and a henpecked husband. He taught his daughter to read and took her on outings to expand her horizons. In contrast, her stepmother, Mary Jane Vial (Vial by name and vile by nature), tried to limit the child’s contact with her father, and tried to bring Mary up as a ‘proper’ little girl. Her own daughter, Jane, was sent off to boarding school to learn French, while young Mary never received any formal education. Percy Shelly was already married to Harriet Westbrook. He was very taken with the teenaged Mary, and she was impressed with the elegant and brilliant young man. After falling in love, they fled to France to escape his failed marriage and the disapproval of Mary’s father. For eight years, they lived in poverty, while Mary gave birth to four children. Only one child survived their infancy, Percy Florence. Mary nearly died during the miscarriage of her fifth pregnancy. During this time, the pair were accompanied by Mary’s stepsister Jane, who also had an ongoing relationship with Percy. After the suicide of Harriet in 1817, Mary and Percy did marry. It was during this turbulent time, while staying with Byron in Switzerland, that Mary conceived the idea for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Famously, the idea came to her in a dream. Even though this is considered the first Science Fiction novel, the theme of the book is rather negative about the benefits of science. Though both Mary and Percy Shelley were supporters of the ideals of the Enlightenment, Percy, as a poet, was still a Romantic at heart. Mary was obviously plagued with ambivalent feelings towards her philosophy, possibly due to her father’s rejection of her and Percy. The gothic Frankenstein wasn’t the only book that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote, but it is the one that she is remembered for. Percy never saw her as his literary equal, even though he did encourage her writing. I personally think her fame has certainly exceeded his, as I can’t think of one movie or book that is based on his work, while there are dozens of movies based around Frankenstein’s monster, and much other creative work – books, songs, movies – use the book as the basis for their themes and mythologies. In 1822, on 8 July, Mary was to suffer the loss of Percy, by drowning. This was only a month or so after her miscarriage. Their marriage had been in trouble, due to Percy’s commitment to the ideals of ‘free love’, but his death was still a terrible tragedy. She was never to remarry. Mary Shelley went on to survive a bout of smallpox. She was a tough woman, and continued to write for the rest of her life. But she wasn’t a lucky person. It was a brain tumour that killed her in the end, at the relatively young age of fifty-two. Concept of the Month: Animation by Electricity It was Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani, university professors, who did the first experiments with frogs’ legs and electricity. (As you might guess from their names, these men were very important to the development of the science of electricity.) They disagreed on the actual type of electricity that living systems use, but they both conducted experiments using a dead frog’s leg on an iron plate. Every time the plate was electrified, the leg would twitch. Mary Shelley was aware of these experiments, and they inspired her literary creation of Frankenstein’s Monster. Lynne’s Literary Comment
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| *The Voyager Science Queen is also known as Lynne Green So, who is this woman who attempts to entertain us with Science? Well, I really am a scientist. I have a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Queensland, in Zoology. And, at the moment, I am working in a Pathology laboratory. I have always been intensely curious about every aspect of our universe, from the teeny tiny workings of the gene right up to the mind-bending forces that are twisting and knotting inside a blackhole. So, now I am sharing a brain stuffed full of trivia...and hopefully entertaining people at the same time. As well, I write Fantasy stories and novels. One day, I hope to have a book published, but don't hold your breath. Reading is my other major love, and my favourite authors are Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov, though I could list hundreds of others. If I had one wish, I ask for more time to write! Read previous Sci-Facts: The Vortex Looking for more scientific oddities? Have you checked out Dr Steven Juan's website? He is, quite literally, the wizard of odds! |
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