SF Writers: How To Improve Your Science

Learn from the Master. Stephen Hawking needs an assistant. I’m sure you could brush up on your theoretical physics. What’s that? You do get out? Never mind. But what this guy could teach you about quantum gravity and black holes would be fairly useful stuff.

When I worked in bookselling, it was at the end of the downward trend in Popular Science titles, the core of which consisted of books written by Hawking. I often wonder how many SF writers were inspired by books in this genre, or whether many just looked at the pretty Mandelbrot set. And did these books have an impact on the quality of science within SF? Moreover, do readers really care about the quality of science, so long as there’s a good story, and we’re wowed by it all? In my opinion we’d be wowed just as much by real science.

Just a thought. But why not apply for the job? Would keep you busy, and stop you reading blogs in your lunch hour…

—Mark N