Brotherton, whose book Spider Star has creatures living in an accretion disk, points to a couple papers from the 1990s which say that it's possible that civilizations really could develop in that environment. One paper, "Accretion disk civilization 1: Habitable zone around accretion disks at galactic nuclei" by J. Fukue et al., notes that the density of stars and planets in the accretion disk is expected to be high, and wonders what sort of planets might develop there. Fukue's second paper, "Accretion disk civilization 2: From sunhook to photon floater," gets even more speculative, talking about civilizations that could harness the energy of an accretion disk using a "photon floater":

An accretion disk surrounding a supermassive black hole at the active galactic nuclei radiates tremendous energy. In order to utilize energy of the accretion disk system, the author investigates the configuration and stability of a floating platform - photon floater - above the accretion disk, which is supported by the radiation pressure of the disk radiation. In the case of the far-floater, which is located far from the disk, there exists a critical floating angle, where the gravitational force of the central black hole is balanced with radiation pressure. In the case of the near-floater, which is located very close to the disk, there exists a critical floating height, where the gravity is balanced with radiation. It is demonstrated that this floating height is dynamical stable. Finally, in the case of the axis-floater, which is located on the axis of the disk, the photon floater is unstable.

Accretion disk image from Science Clarified.

[Mike Brotherton]

Brotherton, who organizes the Launchpad astronomy workshop for science fiction authors, has posted a couple of really great blog posts recently about how science fiction authors sometimes know more about the implications of science than scientists themselves. In one post, he just seems at first to be wishing that mainstream culture should pay more attention to science fiction, but then he adds:

Cloning was a scary fantasy, but not more, in movies and books, before the reality of Dolly the Sheep. Then to make sense of this development for public policy they called in experts like…doctors and clergy?

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The science fiction community had been talking about this for decades in serious ways and had a grasp of it better than even the people involved with the actual research. I mean, the creator of Dolly thought that cloning humans was a bad idea because if a couple cloned the father, say, to have a child, the mother would then find the child sexually attractive when he grew up. WTF??? Seriously, this was his position.

And then in another post, entitled "Scientists Sometimes Need To Think Like Science Fiction Authors," Brotherton examines a scientific proposal for focusing SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) scans, which is based on the assumption that alien civilizations would be doing the same thing we are: looking for exoplanets when they're eclipsing their suns. (I'm simplifying slightly here.) But science fiction writers will point out that it's a fallacy to assume that these alien civilizations are at the exact same level of technological development as ourselves. Assuming civiliation is a long-lived phenomenon, the aliens could be a century or more advanced than we are.

Both posts are well worth reading in their entirety, for a thought-provoking discussion of the ways in which pure science and science fiction can help to fill each other's gaps. Dolly The Sheep image by Monika Teal.

Peggy Kolm with the awesome Biology In Science Fiction blog and Stephanie Zvan with Almost Diamonds are co-chairing a panel on science fiction at Science09, and they're surveying science bloggers in advance. If you want to participate, you can post the answers on your own blog, or answer here. The answers will be added to the conference wiki. There doesn't seem to be a deadline, but the conference is in January.

A typical comment comes from Ken at Geo Slice:

Science fiction has both no role in promoting science and [yet] it often serves as a de facto introduction to science for the general public. For writers, I think it’s very rare for promoting science to even be considered when wrting sci-fi...

In the case of science fiction movies and TV, I think that harm often results. Most of the general public wouldn’t consider the various CSI shows as science fiction, but that’s exactly what they are. One consequence is that people serving on juries often expect more than is actually possible from prosecutors and have little understanding of important details and caveats of scientific evidence – so, our legal system is suffering due to missunderstandings that often originate from TV shows.

Sean Craven puts it most concisely:

Most science fiction is, from my limited and biased perspective, fantasy with chrome.

Mike Brotherton, a hard science fiction writer who founded the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, is also a bit scathing:

I don’t need my science fiction to be so-called “hard” science fiction. I just need it not to be blatantly stupid or fantasy without clearly being fantasy. I mean, too many space-based science fiction stories ignore the laws of physics, and common sense, as it is.... As for the harm, well, there has been a lot of discussion about that, too, following Buzz Aldrin’s comments that unrealistic and unscientific science fiction has dampened interest in the space program. I don’t think his case is overwhelming, but I agree that science fiction has an effect and it isn’t always positive, at least to the public at large that isn’t already a fan of science and discovery.

And then there's geology professor Kim Hannula with All Of My Faults Are Stress-Related:

I don't think science fiction is particularly good at promoting science. (One word: Frankenstein.) An awful lot of science fiction seems to reveal a fear of the unknown, a fear of tampering with nature or with going too far in trying to understand something... Whether it harms the cause of science... well, honestly, I don't think that science should be a cause, really. Science is a sort of organized curiosity about the natural world, and it's sad to live amongst people who are uncurious and afraid of learning new things.

A common theme in Crichton's work is that science is evil, and tampering with the forces of nature will get your face bitten off, writes Brotherton on his blog:

The theme of much of Crichton’s work is that of Frankenstein: playing god brings destruction. This is the message of Jurassic Park and Prey, for starters. There are related themes in books like Sphere, which indicates that there are things that humankind is better off not knowing... When a writer devotes so much time to pointing out the great arrogance and hubris of scientists and how it always brings doom, well, I think that sucks. We don’t have enough positive examples of scientists in books and movies.

And yet in the course of criticizing science, Crichton makes fundamental scientific errors, Brotherton points out. Most amusingly, he thinks "chaos theory" means every complex system will automatically break down — which means the space shuttle shouldn't be able to fly. And of course, Crichton has been lecturing whoever will listen about the "hoax" of global warming, disparaging the work of real climate scientists.

Brotherton links to a fascinating deconstruction of the bad science in Crichton's global warming hoax book, State Of Fear, at RealClimate.org: Crichton dredges up the myth that all scientists believed in the 1970s we were on the verge of an ice age. And in an appendix, Crichton compares the study of global warming to the 19th century academic study of eugenics: both were supported by foundations and had academic support, so ipso facto they must be equally valid. Right? Meanwhile, over at Nanotechnology Now, Chris Phoenix deconstructs the weird science in Crichton's fear-nanotechnology opus Prey, including the idea that atoms can pass through glass. (In which case, lightbulbs wouldn't work all that well.)

[Mike Brotherton]