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"Science-y" Sci-Fi

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Isambard

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Well, I just finished reading the novel Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena and had to say wow. Although the book is jargon heavy, it has rekindled my interest in cell biology given how well it was written and the science cited. For those wondering what the book is about:

"The novel's plot supposes that mitochondria, which are inherited through the female line of descent, form the dispersed body of an intelligent conscious life-form, dubbed Eve, which has been waiting throughout history and evolution for the right conditions when mitochondrial life can achieve its true potential and take over from eukaryotic life-forms (i.e. humans and similar life) by causing a child to be born that can control its own genetic code.
Eve is able to control people's minds and bodies by signaling to the mitochondria in their bodies. She can cause certain thoughts to occur to them and also make them undergo spontaneous combustion."
Parasite Eve - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


I was wondering if anyone else was/is inspired by some particularly compelling work of sci-fi to study some field of science.
 

Split Rock

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I haven't read the book, but the video game was great. One of my favorites for the PS1. The sequel was also quite good. As far as the science is concerned, that's another story. One issue I have with the idea of mitochondria taking over, is that they have lost much of their original DNA to the nucleus. I would say their dependence on the nuclear genome would preclude such an unlikely process. But it makes for a good story!
 
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AV1611VET

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Why not the Sony bible? we've had the McGraw-Hill bible for years.
 
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Naraoia

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Might be a good story, but it hurt just to read that summary.

Mind-controlling parasites are real enough, but the rest is, um, poorly grounded in science.

I think I take my science a bit too seriously.
 
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Upisoft

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Naraoia said:
Mind-controlling parasites are real enough, but the rest is, um, poorly grounded in science.

I think I take my science a bit too seriously.
Click to expand...
I like good Sci-Fi and Fantasy. We must let the authors some freedom to express their ideas. After all they are not scientists.
I like the books of Jules Verne, despite it is unscientific to think that you can send people to the Moon using a realy big Gun. After all, the idea was "going to the Moon", and it happened to be realistic.
 
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Naraoia

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Fantasy is a bit different again, because for some things, magic is a wonderful cop-out. I can't argue with an arbitrary, non-existent magic system so long as it keeps its own rules, but "intelligent being distributed into organelles with all of the genetic complexity of a medium-sized virus remains intelligent and takes over the world" is rather hard to swallow without magic.

Which is not to say that unscientific sci-fi always destroys the fun... but I'd rather people kept the science plausible or wrote a different genre.
 
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Upisoft

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Naraoia said:
Which is not to say that unscientific sci-fi always destroys the fun... but I'd rather people kept the science plausible or wrote a different genre.
Click to expand...
It would be quite boring if 95% of the books about space flight is sub-light travel.

And also I would be sad if Asimov has not written "The End of Eternity". One of his best by my opinion.
 
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AstrophysicsStudent

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Hello all. IMHO, sf is best when it plays within known boundaries of science and extrapolates from there. But that is just opinion.

So, for example, comparing the science in "Parasite Eve" with the science of Asimov's "The End of Eternity" is completely different. We know at the very time the former was written that it is scientific hogwash ... but the latter was entirely plausible at the time it was written.

Only later do we now see in Asimov's novel that "Nova Sol" cannot be used as a time travel device due to the fact that our Sun's size and stature guarantee that it will not explode in a nova event. The point is that Asimov did not KNOW his science was wrong; it was still possible at the time he wrote it.

Contrast "Parasite Eve" which is impossible right from the starting gate. And that's fine; many people do not care about that. Personally though, I am not one of them. I don't care if years down the road it is discovered incorrect, but I like it to line up with science as we currently understand it and then to pick at the borders in different ways. Ah well, to each his own.

To answer the OP's question, I would have to say the novels of Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence probably fanned the already intense desire to go into astronomy.
 
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Isambard

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Well, the author has a PhD in Pharmacology so in this case the writer is a scientist .

Naraoia does have a point about bad science taking away from one's enjoyment of something though for me that's only the case when the work is centered entirely around trying to envision the possibilities of a new scientific discovery and/or invention (such as many of the works of Verne and Wells). For those iffy about the science, just note the plot is well paced and the characters are believabe. Besides, I just try to think of the premise of the book as a very 'liberal' speculation on the Endosymbiotic theory .
 
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Split Rock

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AV1611VET said:
Why not the Sony bible? we've had the McGraw-Hill bible for years.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone here, including yourself, knows what you are posting about. Hey, I have to get a lightbulb today after work, AVET... should I use the GE bible?
 
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