GROWING UP WITH SCIENCE FICTION
By Carl Sagan
May 28, 1978
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‘Science fiction has led me to science,’ says Cornell University astronomer
Sagan, who writes about the impact of sci‐fi on his life and on our society.
By the time I was 10 I had decided — in almost total ignorance of the
difficulty of the problem — that the universe was full up. There were too
many places for this to be the only inhabited planet. And, from the variety of
life on earth (trees looked pretty different from most of my friends), I figured
life elsewhere would seem very strange. I tried hard to imagine what that life
would be like, but despite my best efforts I always produced a kind of
terrestrial chimaera, a blend of existing plants or animals.
About this time a friend introduced me to the Mars novels of Edgar Rice
Burroughs. I had not thought much about Mars before, but here, presented
before me in the adventures of John Carter, was another inhabited world,
breathtakingly fleshed out: ancient sea bottoms, great canal pumping
stations and a variety of beings, some of them exotic. There were, for
example, the eight‐legged beasts of burden, the thoats.
These novels were exhilarating to read. At first. But slowly, doubts began to
gnaw. The plot surprise in the first John Carter novel which I read hinged
on his forgetting that the year is longer on Mars than on earth. But it
seemed to me that if you go to another planet, one of the first things you
check out is the length of the day and the year. Then there were incidental
remarks which at first seemed stunning but on sober reflection proved
disappointing. For example, Burroughs casually comments that on Mars
there are two more primary colors than on earth. Many long minutes did I
spend with my eyes closed, fiercely contemplating a new primary color. But
it would always be something familiar, like a murky brown or plum. How
could there be another primary color on Mars, much less two? What was a
primary color? Was it something to do with physics or something to do with
physiology? I decided that Burroughs might not have known what he was
talking about, but he certainly made his readers think. And in those many
chapters where there was not much to think about, there were satisfyingly
malignant enemies and rousing swordsmanship—more than enough to
maintain the interest of a city‐bound 10‐year‐old in a long Brooklyn
summer.
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The following summer, by sheerest accident, I stumbled upon a magazine
called Astounding Science Fiction in a neighborhood candy store. A glance
at the cover and a quick riffle through the interior showed me it was what I
had been looking for. With some effort I managed to scrape together the
purchase price, opened the magazine at random, sat down on a bench not
20 feet from the store and read my first modern science‐fiction short story,
“Pete Can Fix It” by Raymond F. Jones, a gentle account of time travel into a
postnuclear‐war holocaust. I had known about the atom bomb — I
remember an excited friend explaining to me that it was made of atoms —
but this was the first I had seen about the social implications of nuclear
weapons. It got you thinking.
I found I was hooked. Each month I eagerly awaited the arrival of
Astounding. I read Verne and Wells, read, cover‐to‐cover, the first two
science‐fiction anthologies that I was able to find, devised scorecards,
similar to those I was fond of making for baseball, on the quality of the
stories I read. Many ranked high in asking interesting questions but low in
answering them.
There is still a part of me that is 10 years old. But by and large I'm older. My
critical faculties, and perhaps even my literary tastes, have improved. In
rereading L. Ron Hubbard's “The End Is Not Yet,” which I had first read,
breathless, at age 19, I was so amazed at how it had declined in the
intervening years that I seriously considered the possibility that there were
two novels of that title, by the same author, but of vastly differing quality. I
can no longer manage credulous acceptance as well as I used to. The plot of
Larry Niven's “Neutron Star” hinges on the astonishing tidal forces exerted
by a strong gravitational field. But we are asked to believe that hundreds or
thousands of years from now, at a time of casual interstellar space flight,
such tidal forces have been forgotten. We are asked to believe that the first
probe of a neutron star is a manned rather than an unmanned spacecraft.
We are asked too much. In a novel of ideas the ideas have to work.
In Douglas Trumbull's technically proficient science‐fiction film “Silent
Running,” the trees are dying in vast, spaceborne, closed ecological systems
on the way to Saturn. After weeks of painstaking study and agonizing
searches through botany texts, the solution is found: Plants, it turns out,
need sunlight. Trumbull's characters are able to build interplanetary cities
but have forgotten the inverse‐square law. I was willing to overlook the
portrayal of the rings of Saturn as pastel‐colored gases, but not this.
I have the same trouble with “Star Trek,” which I know has a wide following
and which some thoughtful friends tell me I should view allegorically and
not literally. But when astronauts from earth set down on some far distant
planet and find human beings there in the midst of a conflict between two
nuclear superpowers — which call themselves the Yangs and Coms, or their
phonetic equivalents — the suspension of disbelief crumbles. In a global
terrestrial society centuries in the future, the ship's officers are
embarrassingly Anglo‐American. In fact, only two of 12 or 19 interstellar
vessels are given nonEnglish names, Kongo and Potemkin. And the idea of a
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successful cross between a Vulcan and an earthling simply ignores what we
know of molecular biology and Darwinian evolution. (As I have remarked
elsewhere, such a cross is about as likely as the successful mating of a man
and a petunia.) I have similar problems with films in which spiders 30 feet
tall are menacing the cities of earth: Since insects and arachnids breathe by
diffusion, such marauders would asphyxiate before they could savage their
first metropolis.
I believe that the same thirst for wonder is inside me that was there when I
was 10. But I have since learned a little bit about how the world is really put
together. I find that science fiction has led me to science. I find science more
subtle, more intricate and more awesome than much of science fiction. It
also has the additional virtue of being true. Think of some of the scientific
findings of the last few decades: that there are particles which pass
effortlessly through the solid earth so that we detect as many of them
coming up through our feet as dewn from the sky, that the continents are
moving on a vast conveyer belt with the Himalayas produced by a collision
of India with Asia; that Mars is covered with ancient dry river valleys; that
chimpanzees can learn languages of many hundreds of words, understand
abstract concepts, and construct new grammatical usages; that all life on
earth runs off one particular molecule that contains all the hereditary
information and is able to make identical copies of itself; that in the
constellation Cygnus there is a double star, one of whose components has
such a high gravity that light cannot escape from it (it may be blazing with
visible radiation on the inside but it is invisible from the outside). In the face
of all this (and there is much more, equally fascinating), many of the
standard ideas of science fiction seem to me pale by comparison. I see the
relative absence of these findings in science fiction, and the distortions of
scientific thinking often encountered in science fiction as terrible wasted
opportunities. Real science is as amenable to exciting and engrossing fiction
as fake science, and I think it is important to exploit every opportunity to
convey scientific ideas in a civilization based upon science but somehow
unable to communicate what science is about.
However, the best of science fiction remains very good indeed. There are
stories that are so tautly constructed, so rich in the accommodating details
of an unfamiliar society that they sweep me along before I have even a
chance to be critical. Such works include Robert Heinlein's “The Door into
Summer”; Alfred Buster's “The Stars My Destination” and his “The
Demolished Man”; Jack Finney's “Time and Again”; Frank Herbert's “Dune,”
and Walter M. Miller's “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” You can ruminate over the
ideas in these books. Heinlein's asides on the feasibility and social utility of
household robots exceedingly well over the intervening years. The insights
into terrestrial ecology that are provided by hypothetical extraterrestrial
ecologies, as in “Dune,” perform, I think, an important social service. “He
Who Shrank,” by Henry Hasse, presents an entrancing cosmological
speculation which is being seriously revived today, the idea of an infinite
regress of universes — in which each of our elementary particles is a
universe, one level down from the previous one, and in which we are an
elementary particle in the next universe up. A rare few science‐fiction novels
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combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity. I
am thinking, for example, of Algis Budrys's “Rogue Moon,” Ray Bradbury's
“The Martian Chronicles” and many of the works of Theodore Sturgeon —
including “To Here and the Easel,” a stunning portrait of personality
dissociation as perceived from the inside. Isaac Asimov's story “Breeds There
a Man” provided a poignant insight into the emotional stress and sense of
isolation of many of the best theoretical scientists. Arthur Clarke's “The Nine
Billion Names of God” introduced many Western readers to an intriguing
speculation in Oriental religions.
One of the great benefits of science fiction is that it can convey bits and
pieces, hints and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the
reader. Heinlein's “And He Built a Crooked House” was, for many readers,
the first introduction to four‐dimensional geometry that held any promise of
comprehensibility. One science‐fiction work offers as a ditty the
mathematics of Einstein's last attempt at a unified field theory; another
presents an important equation in population genetics. L. Sprague de
Camp's “Lest Darkness Fall” is an excellent introduction to Rome at the time
of the Gothic invasion, and Asimov's “Foundation” series, although this is
not explained in the books, offers a useful summary of some of the
dynamics of far‐flung imperial Rome. Time‐travel stories — for example, the
three remarkable efforts by Heinlein, “All You Zombies,” “By His Bootstraps”
and “The Door Into Summer” — force the reader into contemplations of the
nature of causality and the arrow of time. These are all works you ponder
over as the water is running out of the bathtub or as you walk through the
woods in an early winter snowfall.
Science‐fiction ideas are widely dispersed, and found today in somewhat
different guises. For one, we have science‐fiction writers such as Asimov and
Clarke providing, in nonfictional form, cogent and sometimes brilliant
summaries of many aspects of science and society. Some contemporary
scientists are introduced to a vaster public by science fiction. For example,
in the thoughtful novel “The Listeners” by James Gunn, we find those
directing a major radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence 50 years from
now comparing their progress with the ideas of my colleague Frank Drake:
“Drake! What did he know?” A great deal, it turns out. We also find straight
science fiction transmogrified into a vast proliferation of writings, belief
systems and organizations. One science‐fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, has
founded a successful cult called Scientology.
‘Scientists have in part repaid their debt to science fiction. There are on
Mars craters named after H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and John W.
Campbell Jr.’
Classic science‐fiction ideas are now institutionalized in pseudoscientific
U.F.O.‐ and ancient‐astronaut belief systems — although Stanley Weinbaum
(in “The Valley of Dreams”) did it better as well as earlier than Erich Von
Daniken (author of “Chariots of the Gods?”). In “Wine of the Dreamers” by
John D. MacDonald (a science‐fiction writer now transformed into one of the
most interesting contemporary authors of detective fiction), we find the
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sentence “And there are traces, in Earth mythology, ... of great ships and
chariots that crossed the sky.” R. De Witt Miller in his story “Within the
Pyramid” manages to anticipate both Von Milliken and Immanuel
Velikovsky, and to provide a more coherent hypothesis on the supposed
extraterrestrial origin of pyramids than can be found in all the writings on
ancient astronauts and pyramidology.
The interweaving of science and science fiction sometimes produces curious
results. It is not always clear whether life imitates alt or vice versa. For
example, in Kurt Vonnegut .Ir.”s superb epistemological novel “The Sirens of
Titan,” a not‐altogether‐inclement environment is postulated on Saturn's
largest moon. When in the last few years some planetary scientists, myself
among them, presented evidence that Titan has a dense atmosphere and
perhaps higher temperatures than expected, many people cJimmented to
me on the prescience of Kurt volutegut. But Vonnegut was a physics major
at Cornell University and naturally knowledgeable about the latest findings
in astronomy. In 1944, an atmosphere of methane was discovered on Titan,
the first satellite in the solar system known to have an atmosphere. In this,
as in many similar cases, art imitates life. (Many of the best science‐fiction
writers have science or engineering backgrounds; for example, Pool
Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein.)
In fact, our understanding of the other planets has often changed faster
than their representations in science fiction. A clement twilight zone on a
synchronously rotating Mercury, a swamp‐and‐jungle Venus, and a canal‐
infested Mars, while all classic science‐fiction devices, are all, in fact, based
upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists. But as our
knowledge of the planets has changed, the environments in the
corresponding science‐fiction stories have also changed. It is satisfyingly
rare to find a science‐fiction story written today that posits algae farms on
the surface of Venus. (Incidentally, the U.F.O.‐contact mylhologizers are
slower to change, and we can still find accounts of flying saucers from a
Venus which is populated by beautiful human beings in long, white robes
inhabiting a kind of Cytherean Garden of Eden. The 900‐degree‐ Fahrenheit
temperatures of Venus give us one way of checking such stories.) Likewise,
the idea of a “space warp” is a hoary science‐fiction standby, but it did not
arise in science fiction. It arose front Einstein's General Theory of Relativily.
The motivational connection between science‐fiction depictions of Mars and
the actual exploration of that planet is so close that, subsequent 10 the
Mariner 9 mission of 1971‐72, we were able to name a few Martian impact
craters after deceased science‐fiction personalities. Thus there are on Mars
craters named after H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stanley Weinhaum
and John W. Campbell Jr.—a debt to science fiction that scientists have now
in part repaid. No doubt other science fiction authors will be added after
they die.
ADVERTISEM
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The great interest of youngsters in science fiction is reflected in a demand
for science‐fiction courses in high schools and colleges. My experience is
that such courses can be fine educational experiences or disasters,
depending on how they are taught. Properly planned science‐fiction courses,
in which real science or real politics is an integral component, would seem
to have a long and useful life in school curriculums.
The greatest human significance of science fiction may be as thought
experiments, as attempts to minimize future shock, as contemplations of
alternative destinies. This is part of the reason that science fiction has so
wide an appeal among young people: It is they who will live in the future. No
society on earth today is well adapted to the earth of 100 or 200 years from
now (if we are wise enough or lucky enough to survive that long). We
desperately need an exploration of alternative futures, both experimental
and conceptual. The stories of Eric Frank Russell were very much to this
point. We were able to see conceivable alternative economic systems, or the
great efficiency of a unified passive resistance to an occupying power. In
modern science fiction can also be found useful suggestions for making a
revolution in an oppressive computerized society, as in Heinlein's “The Moon
is a Harsh Mistress.”
Such ideas, when encountered young, can influence adult behavior. Many
scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself
among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the
fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is
irrelevant. Ten year‐olds do not read the scientific literature.
In all the history of the world there has never before been a period in which
so many significant changes have occurred in so short a span of time.
Accommodation to change, the thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures, is
the key to the survival of civilization and perhaps of humanity. Ours is also
the time of the first generation that has grown up with science fiction. I
know many young people who would, of course, be interested, but in no way
astounded, were we to receive a message tomorrow from an extraterrestrial
civilization. They have already accommodated to that future. I think it is not
an exaggeration to say that, if we survive, science fiction will have made a
vital contribution to the continuation and benign evolution of our
civilization. ■
*****
