Workshop: Science Fiction: Fact or Fancy
Purpose: Some readers get much of their knowledge of science from science fiction. Should teachers be scared by this or see it as an opportunity? What advice can we give to a reader with this habit to help him or her avoid getting too much misinformation?
The purpose of the workshop is to give teachers some ideas on the power and pitfalls of using science fiction to teach science (note that science fiction is also very good for teaching critical thinking [a crucial part of thinking both in science and in the real world]; this topic is discussed in Julie Czerneda’s workshop "Training the Brain -- SF Rules!").
First, the power:
Much of the science in science fiction is real and is presented more accessibly than science is sometimes presented in the classroom. Physics Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman told how his father educated him by telling him stories that illustrated fundamental principles about biology and physics and noted that those stories were very helpful, even when he knew that the stories were wrong in detail. Science fiction can work in the same way, illustrating both basic principles (natural selection, universal gravitation, thermodynamics) and methods (the interaction between theory and experiment) in engaging stories about situations and characters that do not and never did exist.
The pitfalls are obvious: not all the science in science fiction is right; even when it was intended to be correct, authors can make mistakes or find that what was thought to be fact in 1950, 1980, or 1990 is now known to be false. There are non-scientific concepts that are accepted as convenient conventions in science fiction (such as force fields, faster than light space ships, and others), too, and any one of these can mislead a student or adult into believing some false concept is true.
Here are some notions for helping students abstract real scientific facts, principles and methods from fictional ones while harnessing the educative power of SF.
1) First, pick the right stories. Some authors known for clear and accurate explanation of science are:
Larry Niven: author of the Known Space stories, collected in Neutron Star, Tales of Known Space, Flatlander, and others, gives clear explanations of tidal effects and the effects of technology on society in his stories (study guides for two of his stories Neutron Star and Flash Crowd are available on the web and on the CD given out today).
Charles Sheffield, author of the McAndrew stories and young adult novels such as Higher Education and Godspeed has written many stories that center on particular scientific principles. One of his stories Packing Fraction is the title story in a collection edited by Julie Czerneda specifically intended for elementary and secondary classroom use (available through Trifolium Books of Toronto).
Hal Clement is an elementary and secondary school science teacher and was recently named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers Association. His books (Needle, Mission of Gravity and Half Life and others) and stories are all written with a devotion to scientific accuracy, and scientific principles and fact (particularly in physics, chemistry and biology) are always integral to their plots. The New England Science Fiction Association Press (NESFA Press) has recently republished many of Clement’s best works.
2) Many science fiction stories are "puzzle stories," in which the hero is in some predicament that cannot be escaped without some key scientific insight. Students should be told this, and also told that while SF writers will often use an imaginary technological development to get the hero into the problem (faster than light travel, etc.), the insight used to escape or resolve the problem is generally as scientifically accurate as the author can make it.
3) The more one knows about the basics of science, the more likely it is that the real science in a story is recognized and incorporated into the reader’s worldview (while the false science is recognized as at least questionable). Assigning some stories after the class discussion of a particular subject is one way to use the above idea. Teachers may also want to use Charles Sheffield’s recently published Borderlands of Science, a non-fiction text on basic physics, chemistry and biology, which provides the reader with enough background in science to recognize a large percentage of the scientific mistakes and shortcuts used in science fiction. In classrooms with web access, http://www.badastronomy.com/ and http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html (which deal with popular misconceptions about science and provide some suggestions for teaching correct scientific facts) could also be useful.
General SF teaching advice:
Science fiction in its current form developed in magazines; therefore many classics of the field are short stories, or novels short enough to be published serially in two or three parts. Using short stories in the classroom makes sense for many reasons, especially when introducing SF to students with little experience with written SF. Short stories take much less investment of time than novels do, thus allowing the reader to experience different subgenres of SF and to distinguish between "I didn't like this story" and "I don't like science fiction". Here are some good short story collections:
Visions of Wonder edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf, published in 1996 is a collection of modern science fiction endorsed by the Science Fiction Research Association. It contains several dozen stories from the last 25 years (including Vernor Vinge's "True Names," John Varley's "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank," Frederik Pohl's "Redemption in the Quantum Realm," and Greg Bear's "Blood Music"), and critical essays by prominent SF writers/critics.
Neutron Star by Larry Niven - an older book, but still in print and containing numerous classic stories.
The McAndrew Chronicles by Charles Sheffield
Otherness by David Brin
The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke - a brand new book containing all Clarke's stories including the ones that became the novel "Childhood's End" and the movie "2001".
Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson contains a different kind of SF story, which might appeal to those who don't like Neutron Star or Clarke.
Finally, my (Andrew Love’s) website is http://communities.msn.com/AndysUsingScienceFictionForEducationPage. Feel free to check it out; I’ve got links to the various Reading for the Future organizations (also available here http://www.jps.net/helgem/rffutah/)
