If a film claims such I'll regard it poorly regardless.
Scientific Accuracy in Tv and Films
- Thread starter valkyrie013
- Start date
I've never heard of that one, but I recently got a new Kindle, so I think I'll look for it! Sounds great
As well as more people going on the trip and the message buried deep within Pi.
You're in for a literary feast of the finest gourmet style. Cherryh's Cyteen/Regenesis novels rival Frank Herbert's Dune for complexity, political intrigue, and how to use genetics, psychology, and sociology to design entire societies to live and work on stations and advance humanity into the galaxy, all while keeping an interstellar economy going while dealing with STL vs FTL ships.I've never heard of that one, but I recently got a new Kindle, so I think I'll look for it! Sounds great
There are some dandy space opera parts of this universe, that deal with how to have a functioning interstellar economy with STL cargo ships (they're crewed by whole families and kids are usually fathered by crewmen from other ships they meet in port on the stations; this avoids the problem of inbreeding).
I have quite a list to recommend:
Tripoint
Downbelow Station
Finity's End*
Alliance Rising*
Rimrunners
Cyteen
Regenesis
These are my favorites of her novels in this series. I don't know how many times I've reread Rimrunners and Cyteen. I love the characters and Cyteen is a wonderfully complex novel that gives me new insights with every reread.
Finity's End and Alliance Rising are part of a 3-novel arc, and the third part (Alliance Unbound) is coming out next month.
I wish she'd write a sequel to Regenesis, because there are some intriguing new plot elements introduced in that, and I want to know how it turns out. One of the themes of Cyteen/Regenesis is the ethics of terraforming planets; this universe has only two planets where humans can exist openly on the surface without protective gear and some sort of breathing apparatus, and Regenesis left off with the main character making long-term plans to terraform an ice-age world called Eversnow. Part of the issue isn't can they do it, but should they.
There's also some excellent fanfic over at AO3 (Archive Of Our Own).
I also recommend Cherryh's shared-world series Merovingen Nights. Imagine Renaissance Venice on another planet in the 33rd century, but where science is stifled because of a fear of attracting the attention of aliens who really don't want humans on that planet. Cherryh wrote the introductory novel Angel With the Sword, and the others are written by numerous others in a loosely connected anthology style. Altair Jones is one of the coolest characters I've ever encountered in my reading. Don't piss her off, though, or she'll gut you with her boat hook.
Looks like quite the deep dive. The ones you listed, are they all part of the same series? They sound fascinating and right up my alley.
This series spans centuries of in-universe time, and all the ones I listed are part of it. There are some novels that are part of in-universe story arcs, and the list I gave is in no particular order. I'm not even sure what order they're all in. I just know that Cyteen/Regenesis is late 24th/early 25th century, and the Merovingen Nights series (very loosely part of this universe but there are no direct references) takes place in the 33rd century.
Part of the challenge is the fact that the earlier in-universe chronology books take place in an STL era. That means the rate at which the people on the ships (merchanter or warships) live is different from the rate at which the people on the star stations and planets live. Keeping track of exactly what year it is in which book... I'd have to take another look at Cherryh's website where she has a ton of information about the series.
Downbelow Station is the first of her books I read, back in 1982, the year that I went to my first science fiction convention. She was the Guest of Honor, so I got to meet her. She was the GoH again, several years later, and I was really happy to get my copies of Rimrunners and Angel With a Sword signed.
Both Downbelow Station and Cyteen are Hugo winners, and depending on your preference, each could be said to be her masterwork. Downbelow Station is part of the Company Wars era, with warships from Earth against the Merchanters, vying for economic and military control of the star stations. Mixed in with this is Captain Signy Mallory, who has her own ideas about who's right and who's wrong... she's one of Cherryh's best-loved characters and there's a fantastic filksong about her. Unfortunately I can't find a version on YT that doesn't grate on my ears (Mercedes Lackey can write, but her singing voice is awful).
Cyteen takes place decades later in the chronology, on the other side of the line between Union and Alliance territory.
Okay, I found some information on the books relevant to this series (small print, so you might need to magnify, depending on your vision), and a chronology.
Bibliography of Cherryh's books
Alliance-Union chronology
I just took a look at the chronology, and holy crap. It won't mean anything unless you've read Downbelow Station and Rimrunners - at least. And it ends at 2300, which means that most of Cyteen and all of Regenesis isn't covered in it. But these are old websites and haven't been updated recently.
Here's her Wikipedia article. It mentions Cherryh's views of how to do believable world-building of societies and aliens, among other interesting things.
It's a very complex universe she created, and some books will take more than one reading to absorb everything. I've been reading her stuff for 40 years, and may start my umpteenth reading of Cyteen again (it happened to be close by as I was typing this post).
It's helpful that you're into astronomy, as Cherryh mentions real stars (though the planets and stations are all fictional, of course).
A pet peeve of mine is writers who casually toss around words like "another galaxy" and "intergalactic" without having the foggiest notion of what a galaxy is and is not.
In Asimov's novelization of the screenplay, after the white blood cell engulfed and digested the Proteus, the government agent Grant (played by Stephen Boyd in the movie) got the white cell to follow him and the crew through the tear duct and out Benes' eye.
They have no idea how big a galaxy really is or how far apart they are.
I've come around to the opinion that scientific accuracy in tv/film is like correct grammar in poetry. If it's there & is used well... it's nice. Hats off... but it's not the end all be all of the art imho. The trick is to know how to implement the wrong things in such degrees as to not spoil the experience.
For a more down to earth example... in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Eraser", people are running around with rail guns that fire "aluminum bullets at nearly the speed of light". The novelization reduces this figure to half of light speed.
Thing is, according to my calculations, a bullet weighing a hundredth of a gram, propelled at a conservative 0.4c, would have 30 times the kick of a .50 BMG round, and hit its target with 82 gigajoules of kinetic energy. In other words, enough energy to not only kill an elephant, but splatter it across half a county.
And... Arnold was firing two of them at once.
Thing is, according to my calculations, a bullet weighing a hundredth of a gram, propelled at a conservative 0.4c, would have 30 times the kick of a .50 BMG round, and hit its target with 82 gigajoules of kinetic energy. In other words, enough energy to not only kill an elephant, but splatter it across half a county.
And... Arnold was firing two of them at once.
That's a good comparison. For me, it also depends on whether it's a simple mistake, like confusing ultraviolet and infrared as on Disco, or making up silly stuff on purpose, like non-filtering filters and cry-susceptible dilithium on Disco
I've had this argument on the board before with "scientists", but I don't care about scientific accuracy at all in science fiction. I'm just here for the fiction part. If they happen to get the science accurate, that's cool and I'll enjoy reading the article about it.
If it's your profession, I could understand being frustrated with how things are presented, but the people who watch shows with clipboards to write down every inaccuracy are losers.
If it's your profession, I could understand being frustrated with how things are presented, but the people who watch shows with clipboards to write down every inaccuracy are losers.
You don't have to be professional if something in your field of interest is presented as absolutely wrong, or just wrong enough to make the viewer roll their eyes and have less enjoyment.
The genre is science fiction. That means that whatever science is in it needs to either be accurate according to what is currently known, or a plausible extrapolation of what is known to could become known.
I can understand if it doesn't affect everybody, but for some, it only comes naturally. and certain things can really stand out without much effort and pull them out of the immersion. We're not talking needing to be 100% accurate here, but that making an effort goes a long way towards establishing a connection and making it more grounded.
I mean, yes and no. It's kind of like how glass is treated in fiction. In reality it would rip people to ribbons while in film it's ok to jump through it and look cool while doing it. Ok, fine, bad science. But, you add on more and more things and claim that it's "Just Science Fiction" and it will start to erode away what foundation was there to begin with. I personally prefer a small measure of groundedness even if extrapolated out to something seemingly ridiculous. An effort to ground that in some measure of reality will aid in suspension of disbelief.
Now, I'm not a clipboard person (save for my own profession which routinely gets treated wrong) but I do think start with a basic understanding will help out a lot.
Last edited:
I'm not a fan of the movie: in the book four people go on the trip, in the movie only Ellie, thus using that tired trope that in Space we find faith.
That's in the book, as well, as both Ellie and Palmer Joss each have a sort of epiphany, where the man of faith understands science, and the scientist writes a computer program that shows her what she believes is proof of a creator.
Or so I recall. It's been years since I read it. Of course the movie shoehorned these characters into bed and a romance, when that wasn't in the book.
Regardless of what each reader believes or doesn't believe, the novel does attempt to conform to Sagan's dialogue in Cosmos: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Whatever issues there may be with the plot, Jodie Foster knocked it out of the park. Her line, "They should have sent a poet" is one of the most human insights the character had, and she delivers that line so perfectly that it makes me tear up, every single time.
Reviewed the film when it came out, then read the book to see if what I disliked was film or book.
Similar threads
