Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement?

[ReadyAndWilling]

hi all, so this idea came across my mind earlier today before work.

maybe i'm not the only one, but i've always loved science fiction -- even before i started high school. the ideas it brings forth, for me, seem to open my mind up while i'm watching. whether it's the terminator, star trek, stargate, star wars etc etc. they all seem to fascinate me more and more through the unique ideas and characters that are presented.

maybe i'm just deluding myself into thinking i'm learning something when i'm just 'watching tv' and not really learning anything of value.

 

[Silvercrest]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

There's nothing wrong with learning things from s.f. as long as you're able and willing (and ready) to recognize where fact ends and fiction begins.

There are a lot of people on this board who are convinced that a human being will instantly explode like a bomb when placed in vacuum, that black holes are gigantic space Hoovers (or gigantic space tunnels), and that you can exceed the speed of light if you can only build a big enough rocket. Because they saw it onscreen and treat it as gospel.

If you see it on a science-fiction show (or anywhere else on TV), question it. Read up on it. Determine if it's plausible or just the output of someone's fevered imagination. Then you are learning something of value.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

It makes me look stuff up and also have fun.

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

I used to just enjoy it for entertainment purposes when I was younger, but now I've very interested in physics and astronomy thanks to authors like Stephen Baxter.

 

[xortex]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

There is a point of knowing too much like Faust and you'll be paralyzed by it and won't want to go back to work. As Kurt Cobain said. Who needs action when you got words. Well put together stories, and not a string of events, is thrilling but we as a society are over stimulated. Look what happened to the Talosians. They probably looked just like us when they started watching tv. Great liturature is meant to expand your mind and capacity for thought and ability to appreciate the things you didn't before. So it does teach compassion and empathy as well as cynacism.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

Entertainment.

 

[Kelthaz]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

Just entertainment. The entertainment might be a little bit deeper at times (Babylon 5 vs. Power Rangers for example), but it's all just a bunch of wibbly-wobbly nonsense meant for entertainment. I've never learned anything more than useless (and awesome) trivia from science fiction.

 

[Mysterion]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

If you have been inspired by science fiction to go learn science, I think that is fantastic. Go for it!

If you're learning your science from science fiction, you are more than likely doing yourself a disservice. Put down the Star Trek, and get back to school!

You shouldn't be teaching yourself astrophysics by watching Star Wars any more than you should be teaching yourself the history of the Korean War by watching M.A.S.H. re-runs, or how to be a doctor by watching Grey's Anatomy.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

It depends on what science fiction you mean. A lot of SF literature is very educational and expands your knowledge of the universe. Most mass-media SF just misleads you about how the universe works. If you want SF to be educational rather than just entertaining, then you need it to be SF you read rather than SF you watch.

There are a few SF films and movies that actually count as informative. 2001 and 2010 have pretty accurate space science. Contact is a very realistic movie. Jurassic Park had pretty solid paleontology and biology for its day, allowing for poetic license like tiptoeing T. rexes, though a number of its assumptions about dinosaurs are now outdated. Gattaca deals pretty well with genetic engineering.

In TV, the early seasons of ST:TNG often featured real astrophysical phenomena and credible science rather than the random technobabble that later Trek seasons increasingly embraced. Similarly, the first couple of seasons of Primeval were educational about the life forms of lesser-known geological eras, going beyond the usual cliches of dinosaurs and sabertooth cats and giving viewers a broader sampling of ancient life, although one had to allow for a degree of dramatic exaggeration; but more recent seasons have abandoned any pretense of science and have tended to be about dinosaur this and bizarre future creature that, and with the main scientist character gone there's a lot less exposition than there used to be. Then there's Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, whose first season and a half were just about the hardest hard-SF show that's ever been on TV, but that then degenerated into inanity. Sense a pattern?

On the other hand, the Stargate franchise bucked the trend by becoming more scientifically literate over time. The movie was cliched ancient-astronaut crap, and the TV series was initially only marginally better and often badly screwed up its anthropology and history, but as time went on, the producers started putting more care into the science, phasing out some of the sillier ideas, and working in some good science here and there, although it was hit-and-miss. They totally screwed up the science in their famous "Carter blows up a star" episode (stars lose mass to the stellar wind all the time, so removing mass from them wouldn't make their cores blow up), and their stuff with the Ancients and the "first evolution of humanity" was ridiculous from a biological standpoint, but on the flipside, the SG-1 episode "Tangent" was a marvelous, beautiful piece of hard SF where they really did the research and put care into getting the technical details right, and "Prophecy" had one of the best discussions of quantum physics I've ever seen on TV. Then when you get to Stargate Universe, they brought on respected SF novelist John Scalzi as a technical consultant and their astrophysics and planetary science became substantially better than on either of the previous SG shows.

But overall, remember, if you hear "science fiction" and think only of TV and movies, then you're overlooking the vast majority of what science fiction is. TV and film SF barely scratch the surface. It's mostly just entry-level stuff. There is so much more out there in books and short stories, going so far beyond the mass-media stuff in its range and depth and diversity and sheer quantity.

 

[FalTorPan]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

I would be more inclined to consider literary sf more educational than I'd consider TV or movie sf to be, but I consider sf in both media to be almost entirely entertainment -- occasionally thought-provoking entertainment.

 

[Davros]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

Some is educational, some is entertainment.

 

[sojourner]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

There's a reason it's called science fiction. It's a great place to develop questions, but a terrible place to get answers.

 

[stonester1]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

The best ones make me think, and not about the science (although it's fine if it does, but bad/pulp/or hard science, I consider just a prop. But if you give me overtly bad science and combine it with a crappy story, say, Armageddon, you will lose me), but the philosophy, the meaning of things, the questions of life, the universe, everything, relationships, people, spirituality, etc.

But if you give me great characters I care about, an interesting universe, and toys n 'splosions, I'll enjoy that, too.

If you give me the latter of the above WITHOUT THE FORMER...pass.

 

[Silent_Bob]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

I wouldnt say any Science fiction is necessarily educational, i certainly wouldnt rely on it to learn things, mainly because any real science is paired with a fair bit of nonsense.

For example Stargate is useful from an Egyptology standpoint because of the effort the makers put into the Abyddosian language, it's pretty much as close to spoken Ancient Egyptian as you're going to get without a time machine, but thats somewhat negated by the daft "Aliens built the Pyramids".

What i would call Science Fiction is thought provoking. Good science fiction shouldn't be focused on the science but the effect it has on the world. It should raise questions about technology or future events, how would we deal with it, how would society change.

A novel about how the martians invaded Earth, how they built their ships and the science behind lining up the shot when the two planets are in opposition and the mathematical formulae behind it would bore me to tears. But a book that uses that as a jumping off point to show the chaos and calamity of an extra terrestrial invasion, well thats 'War of the Worlds' and theres a reason its still read 113 years later.

 

[stonester1]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

What i would call Science Fiction is thought provoking. Good science fiction shouldn't be focused on the science but the effect it has on the world. It should raise questions about technology or future events, how would we deal with it, how would society change.

Hear hear.

 

[Forbin]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

It makes me look stuff up and also have fun.

That's a good answer right there.

 

[Forbin]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

I enjoy both. I can read a straight adventure series by Drake or Webber or Moon and know I can ignore the physics and just enjoy the adventure. But I also love reading Clarke and Baxter and Niven, knowing that there's some scientific knowledge behind what's going on. These will inspire me to seek more real-world knowledge on the subjects presented.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

There's a reason it's called science fiction. It's a great place to develop questions, but a terrible place to get answers.

I am so sick of hearing that glib and totally false generalization. It is not called science fiction because the science is imaginary. That's bull. It is called science fiction because it is fiction (i.e. stories about characters and/or events that do not actually exist) in which scientific concepts are central to the story. Yes, sometimes the science is imaginary, but sometimes it's very firmly grounded in real science and technology, and sometimes it's a mix of the two. Sometimes the science in science fiction is so solid and realistic that it inspires actual progress in theoretical physics and practical engineering.

The power of science fiction as a literary genre is that it can and does inspire people to learn about real science. Many working scientists started out as SF fans. Many working scientists are SF writers. Many terms used routinely in real science today, like "robotics" and "gas giant" and "genetic engineering," were invented by science fiction writers (respectively, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, and Jack Williamson). There has always been a close symbiosis between science and science fiction, with both fields learning from one another. If actual scientists can learn about science from reading science fiction, then certainly laypeople can as well.

Unfortunately, what passes for science fiction in the mass media is mostly very far divorced from this proud tradition, since most of it is just made-up gibberish. And that's why people whose awareness of SF is limited to film and television, who are ignorant of the prose works that make up the vast majority of the actual genre, come away with this totally incorrect perception that "it's called science fiction because the science is all wrong." The good stuff, the real stuff that mostly can only be found in print, is called science fiction because it's fiction driven by science, inspired by scientific concepts and scientific reasoning, celebrating science and its possibilities.

And I really wish more mass-media SF were like that too. SF can be a wonderful tool for inspiring interest in science, for educating people in an entertaining way, and most film/television SF squanders that opportunity completely. It's a waste of potential.

 

[Bisz]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

I have learned quite a bit from Sci-Fi. As Christopher above says, there is a lot of good Science Fiction out there even through the majority of the easily accessible stuff is Science Fiction, you just have to be smart enough to tell the difference.

I'm one of those people that will look up something which peaks my interest to learn more about it, and Sci-Fi peaks my interest a lot. I also credit TNG with driving me to become an engineer.

 

[sojourner]

Re: Science Fiction: Do you find it educational or just entertainement

Christopher - I didn't say the science was wrong. You did. The fact remains that there is probably more bad science in the genre than good science. The generalization stands.

So it goes back to the second sentence in my original post. It's a great place to develop questions, but a terrible place to get answers.