Re: It is not just Physics that Should be Hard in Hard SF

On Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:03:51 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.invalid> wrote:

On 10/11/24 10:38, Don wrote:

Kevrob wrote:

Don wrote:

Ahasuerus wrote:

Robert Woodward wrote:

I think authors mess up biology quite often in Science Fiction/Fantasy.
For example, IMHO, genetic engineering will be much more difficult than
some authors assume because an individual's DNA isn't the blueprint but
the assembly instructions.
>
Also, I have seen stories where advanced bio-technic civilizations use
bacteria (or multicellular organisms) to wreck havoc on our type of
technology. Essentially, they are speeding up rust and other forms of
degradation by one or more orders of magnitude. This, unfortunately,
requires one of more orders of magnitude more power at the cellular
level (probably greater amounts of stored energy as well).
>

The other day a PharmD wrote
(https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1fj0aon/books_that_feature_speculative_but_accurate/):
>
science fiction ... is very sophisticated when it comes to
engineering, astronomy and physics, but when it comes to
biochemistry, medicine and pharmacology, I've yet to encounter
any fiction that gets it right.
>
My response was:
>
Are you, by chance, familiar with Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy
(https://effectiviology.com/knolls-law/):
>
everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for
the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge
>
or the similar Gell-Mann amnesia effect
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect)?

>
Robin Cook's mentioned at the reddit link. My followup pertains to Cook.
>
Edgar Allan Poe (EAP) invented the detective genre. EAP's sleuth took
the form of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, who triumphed through
thoughtfulness. Dupin believed the game of chess suitable for
developing mental prowess.
>
EAP nemesis Arthur Conan Doyle followed in Poe's footsteps. Doyle
projected his own drug use into Holmes to twist Poe's clear thinking
detective into mysticism. The Poe-Doyle nexus will be covered by me in
the future.

>
Well I find your logic flawed as he was writing about
his mentor in Medical School who used science as tool in detection.
Whether or not that mentor used stimulants is a open question
but the detective he wrote about only used cocaine when he was
bored by the lack of interesting crimes to investigate.
>

>
Agatha Christie restored Poe's idealized detective. Her character,
Hercule Poirot, also brings back the Francophilia found in Poe's Dupin.

>
Pardon me but Poirot is a Belgian. Nothing to do with Some imagained
Francophilia.
>

>
Levinson and Link's Lieutenant Columbo closely follows formula. Is the
show's Peugeot 403 another nod to Poe's Dupin?
>
Robin Cook's  Critical  (Cook, 2007) contains a Lieutenant strikingly
similar to Columbo. Cook's hard-science biology is about as good as it
gets these days.

>
Cook is a trained M. Have you tried F.Paul Wilson's medical-related
thrillers? He's a DO.

 
Thank you for the lead. It'll be interesting to see how much Wilson's
detective ?Quinn Cleary? follows the formula found above -
ratiocination in the manner of EAP's Dupin. (Ellery Queen also needs to
be read by me.)
     My readers may wonder what's so special about Poe's French
detective? French theoretical physicist Pierre Duhem explains the innate
superiority of the Gallic mind:
 
     We need logic, the ability to systematize, but we also
     need intuition, the recognition of truth. When one of
     these is allowed to dominate, we get a science which
     is all intuition, all "esprit de finesse," but no
     logical coherence, namely, English science; or we get
     a science which is all logic, lacking bon sens, namely,
     German science. German science then is a degenerate
     kind of French science, the latter being predominantly
     "esprit de geometrie," corrected by bon sens.
 
     <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duhem/>
 
There's also a French connection as intelligence officer EAP's
grandfather served as Quartermaster General for the Marquis de
Lafayette in the Continental Army. Perhaps EAP's Francophilia
insulted Arthur Conan Doyle.
 
Danke,
 
--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.
 

Please do not leave out Perry Mason who is Sherlockian in his
ability to pick the murderer out the crowd of suspects. Paul Drake is
his investigator to determine all the knowable facts of a case.
Earle Stanley Gardener invented him but the books read more like an
outline for scripts. I watched the pre-WW II movies where Perry was
played by a Hispanic-surnamed star and which were largely set in
San Francisco.

All five are available on a DVD-R /Perry Mason Mysteries: The Original
Warner Bros. Movies Collection/ on two discs. All but the last has a
trailer, which is about as good as it gets for most DVD-Rs (those
replacing out-of-print [so to speak] DVDs tend to have more of the
menu/features on the original DVD).

There were actually three Perry Masons: Ricardo Cortez, Warren
William, and Donald Woods. Some were serious, one did an interesting
take on Perry, modeled on /The Thin Man/.

Most have a simple office; one has an entire floor of a building with
assistant lawyers, clerical employees, etc. One moves Perry to San
Francisco (in the book, he does move there temporarily because that's
where the case it, but the film, as they all do, simplifies things a
bit).

Oh, and Paul Drake isn't actually /named/ until the last film. Earlier
he's called "Spudsy".
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"