Oh, the Boredom of Real Science
Posted by Trent Walters at 8:31 AM
Bacteria have been recruited to--not only consume pollution from contaminated water but to--continuously provide electricity. They form spores so that these hardy critters can be turned back on when needed. I hope the sense-of-wonder-only-thru-FTL-ships crowd can wake back up after that boring bit of scientific reality.
5 Comments:
I don't think any who include FTL spaceships in their work try to elicit sensawunda ONLY with them. It's also rather pathetic you find those bacteria boring. Oh, or were you being ironic?
Ah, but that's exactly my point. Can't we achieve "sensawunda" as frequently without the old tropes as with them? Naysayers don't seem to think so.
But Stirling, I like all SF. Mundane SF separates itself from other SF because of a need to point out that there may not be infinite resources. Not straining the probable away from the less probable creates the illusion that all futures are equally probable, which in effect is exactly what much alternate history has to say.
There's a crucial place in SF for metaphorical SF, but if SF stands for science fiction, then writers should behave responsibly in its use of science.
I think there are clear cases of responsible uses of science. Take a good look again at Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They know very well about the responsible uses of science, and someone had damn well ought to think about it, lest we have another Tuskegee experiment.
I missed your final points. What makes you think there aren't shortages? What makes you think oil is a bottomless tap? What makes you think that using up fresh water sources what screw over environment and the people living around them?
As for "booming," there are still several countries booming though the adjective I ought to have used was "unsustainable." If we have to slash and burn rainforest for farmland that isn't useful for farming after a few years, then the population isn't sustainable.
The ecosystem has to have a balance. If deer overrun a territory and strip the trees and other plants, they not only destroy their own herd but many other creatures dependent on those plants as well.
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