How I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fiction

I gave the source and positioning of this post a lot more thought than i usually do; it's a weird one.

bookofjoe harvests content and posts from many sources, he's one of the many people contributing to the inbound firehose of links and stories.

Not sure how or why this got bumped to the top ten; maybe people see "sci fi" and/or "ivory tower" and a piece of content will get engagement? TBH it reads a little like a publisher's fluff piece, or a writing assignment given to a high schooler.

Some of the commentary is enlightening - she says "Writing fiction is about telling stories and it’s about people and human interaction" This is something you learn when Shakespeare is brought out in elementary school. This is something you should learn if you pay the slightest bit of attention to the stories you read, if the authors are N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin and Becky Chambers, Dan Simmons, and Ray Bradbury, who she mentions in the article.

Any good author writes stories about people; the great ones tap into our expectations and take us for a ride, bringing us to unexpected insight, or opening our eyes to a new constellation of human variables. The authors she mentions are almost universally well known for insight into what makes people tick.

This seems like an aspirational fluff piece intended to market the non-fiction book and land the author an advance so she can write fiction. This isn't intended as a criticism; god knows we can all use whatever we can get. She's apparently in a position with connections that allowed her to get such an article published about her; maybe one of her friends is a publisher or editor, or author? Whatever it is, she hasn't written her fiction book yet, so maybe she needs a breakout of some sort.

This is one of the weirdest pieces of content I've seen land on the front page, almost like a personal blog leak or something. I hope she gets a huge boost and gets to chase her dream.

What is this article? She just released a book, but it's a non-fiction popular science book. I assumed this was about a lifelong academic switching careers to become a full-time science fiction writer, but all I know based on this article is that she's been teaching at community college for about two years, and has written exactly one science fiction short story.

> I wanted a number name. I think seven is the best single digit number. It’s the number of bodies in the sky that move relative to the ‘fixed stars’ — in other words, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. That’s why seven is such an important number cross-culturally: it represents all things that wander in the heavens. It’s also the number of variables in the Drake Equation, and Seven of Nine is my favourite Star Trek character. There’s a lot going on there.

George Costanza was way ahead here:

https://youtu.be/NRUdaWZ4FN0

"...but as far as themes go, I’m more inspired by [authors who are] usually clearly anti-capitalist, criticizing scenarios used in Golden Age science fiction — such as building cities on Mars or expanding beyond the Solar System — by portraying them as capitalist hellscapes."

The golden-age optimistic science fiction placed humans on a stage in the future with aliens, and confronted both with challenges on a far greater scale than earth. The implication that today's problems would surely be solved, was not only a nice escapism but also helped to form a fundamental mindset for the solution of said problems. From terraforming other planets to thinking about carbon dioxide globally, from a war with aliens to seeing the futility of wars on earth. From the absense of actual capitalism or communism on that distant colony in space that lived in harmony, to being open minded about new solutions in everyday politics.

It does not seem clear if pessimistic science fiction, from an author not from the "ivory tower" but the trenches of education in community college, written with an educational message front and center, can have the reach and cultural impact as the stories from the past. Will the classroom in space convince where the daytime job didn't?

Most science fiction is just lazy writing about current pop-culture trends, or stories gleaned from other areas of fiction. It is a difficult genre to navigate for quality...

George Lucas was considered a genius for "allegedly" copying this film scene-for-scene:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress

https://archive.org/details/the-hidden-fortress (1960*, Akira Kurosawa)

The original film was entertaining, and still worth a gander... unlike the poorly generated article =3

Seems logical she would become a writer: her handwriting is so clear.

All jokes aside, what's on that whiteboard looks pretty complex for a community college. It might be soul sucking to be working there after getting the PhD in astrobiology. So perhaps writing is a relief valve, and I wish her the best of luck at it.

(I do have a friend who teaches at a CC, The subjects are pretty basic: algebra and high school calculus. But he told me he really enjoyed the fact that every student wants to be there, so pays attention and does the homework).

I think Gregory Benford is an astrophysicist, as well. He's done fairly well.

For myself, I tend to prefer fantasy, over SF. SF tends to have Big Ideas, and the characters are there to help the Big Idea strut its stuff.

In fantasy, the characters are usually the fulcrum of the story, and the world is built around their stories.

When we contemplate the edges of what could be, some think "what if I had more money?". Others think, "what if the world was a giant cupcake?". Those second guys are the scifi fans. Those first guys like politics.

Using science fiction to discuss politics is like using the Starship Enterprise to drive down to the corner grocery.

Politics is small. Exploring the edges of reality is large.

From one fantasy world to the next.

Does it bother anyone else that the picture featuring the author shows a blackboard containing seemingly unrelated equations just to make it look "this-is-high-brow-complex-mathy-stuff-that-I-am-an-expert-in"?

Why would someone who wants to be taken seriously as a scientist pose in front of something like that?