8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 43DON’T MISS
Listen
Science guru Bill Nye’s views on
the politics of space feature in the
latest instalment of astrophysicist
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s excellent
(if slightly hokey-sounding)
StarTalk All-Stars podcast.Play
Actions have consequences in
Growing the Galaxy: Boundless,
a game where every element –
from the politics to the buildings –
is left entirely in the hands of
the players. It launches on
11 September for PC and PS4.Visit
The premiere of Marshmallow
Laser Feast’s immersive black hole
experience Distortions in
Spacetime kicks off this year’s
British Science Festival, in Hull
from 11 to 14 September.Learn
Discover how conflict can shape
international science at “Science
and the First World War: the
aftermath”, a one-day conference
at London’s Royal Society on
13 September.Watch
Charlton Heston has crashed onto
a distant planet ruled by apes! Go
cheer him (or them) along at a
50th-anniversary screening of
Planet of the Apes (pictured) on
15 September at the National
Space Centre in Leicester. Doors
open at 6.30pm BST.nationhood will eventually
vanish. The world will share the
same set of values and become
a more united group.The science in your stories is
very detailed. Do you consult
experts over its plausibility
when you write?
I have never checked with any
experts for my novels. Not long
ago, science fiction was a very
marginal activity and science-fiction writers didn’t have access
to expert opinions. Those ideas
and concepts of mine are all
distilled from my own self-taught
understanding of the science.When you write stories, do you let
your imagination fly free or is there
a limit to how far you can travel?
The imagination in science fiction
has boundaries. Unlike fantasy,
science fiction must follow
natural laws and scientific rules.For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture
For example, if you want to fly,
you need a massive amount of
energy to work against gravity.
Riding a magical broom doesn’t
work in science fiction.
But there’s something
paradoxical about the science in
science fiction. Although it sets
boundaries, science doesn’t
restrain our imagination; it only
spurs it. What modern physics has
revealed goes far beyond common
sense. We zoom out, and the
universe in science fiction is
40 billion light years across,
consisting of millions of solar
systems with countless planets.
We zoom in, and quantum
mechanics inspires us to create a
world that we can hardly visualise.
Science immensely expands the
canvas for science fiction. Fantasy,
on the other hand, operates almost
entirely at one, human scale.Does it bother you that your wife
and daughter don’t like science
fiction?
Not at all. It is understandable that
they don’t like it. Science fiction,
wherever it comes from, has
always been a niche genre, only
enjoyed by a unique group of
people. I write science fiction, not
because I’m fond of literature, but
because I’m fascinated by science.Which area of science excites
you the most?
I’m interested in studies that
probe the mysteries of nature and
the universe, such as physics and
cosmology. I spend a lot of time
every day reading about them and
following the latest news.Do you think science fiction can
predict the future?
I don’t think science fiction
predicts the future at all. It simply
lays out some possibilities. The
2018 we are living in now is so very
different from the 2018 I wrote
about in my short story of that
name. Back when I wrote 2018 ,
that year seemed really, really far
away – but here we are! ■Yvaine Ye is a science reporter