The science of fantastic discoveries

What is now called science fiction literature is also different from the NF of the 60s of the last century, like a funny boat from a boat on underwater wings. Then there were new ideas that were ahead of science and technology, now - only the shells of ideas, names, entourage.

Science science fiction develops not only according to the laws of literature, but also according to the laws of science, since the backbone itself is at the junction of these two directions of human activity. Fantastic science, like the usual science, experiences its crises, stagnation, ups and revolutions. One of these revolutions occurred unnoticed by readers (it is possible that for the authors) in the 70-90s of the last century, which, in particular, led to the current crisis of new scientific and fantastic ideas.

The revolution was that the prognostic function of harsh science fiction at the current level has exhausted. In fantastic science, as in the science of “ordinary”, not only arose (in fact it was always, only at different times they treated it differently), but a new paradigm began to develop, a new attitude to what the goal (more precisely, one of the main goals) of rigid science fiction.

In the “real” science, a discussion between supporters of two different definitions of the purpose of scientific theory has been conducted for not the first decade. In the science of fantastic, this discussion has not even arisen - its time is coming now. In science, a “ordinary” dispute goes between instrumentalists and ontologists. The English physicist David Deutsch described this situation in the book “Structure of Reality”.

“General theory of relativity,” Deutsch writes, “is so important not because it can predict the movement of planets a little more accurately than Newton's theory, but because it reveals and explains such aspects of reality as curvature of space and time that has not previously been suspected.”

So the scientific and fantastic idea acquires importance and interest in our days when it accurately predicts the technical achievement of the nearest or relatively distant future, and then, when it opens and explains such aspects of reality that readers did not suspect.

In other words, if earlier harsh science fiction dealt mainly with fantastic inventions, now it's time for fundamental fantastic discoveries. However, neither the authors nor readers of the NF were ready for such a development of events.

Science fiction writers have made many interesting and important inventions, but this or that achievement of science, one or another discovery lies at the heart of each invention. How many discoveries explaining the structure of physical or social reality were made by science fiction writers?

In real (and fantastic) science, there are three types of discoveries. First: the discovery that can be made "on the tip of the pen." Work on such a discovery is similar to the work of the detective in the investigation of the crime, precisely because in science fiction, such discoveries most often occur in fantastic detectives. There is a crime (in reality) or a phenomenon of nature (in science). A detective comes (in science - an observer or experimenter), who collects evidence (data from observations or experiments). Then the investigator explores these evidence and on their basis builds assumptions about who could be a killer, where to look for him and how to find him. In science, this role is played by an interpreter theorist: on the basis of data from observations or experiments, it builds hypotheses, puts forward assumptions about the possible physical nature of the phenomenon. An expert (in a detective), who studies the investigative versions, finds contradictions in them, compares with real evidence. In science, the scientific community acts in this role. In the end, having studied all the evidence and analyzing all the assumptions, the detective plunges into deep thought-he seems to know everything, but for some reason the name of the criminal remains unnamed. And here he is visited by insight, insight: he unexpectedly (the idea arises as if by itself in the subconscious) understands how to fold the evidence so that the puzzle is filled, and the discovery is made: the name of the criminal becomes known. In science, the process takes place in the same way: all the results of observations (experiments) are processed, all hypotheses are expressed and analyzed, and there are no solutions (discoveries). The scientist (such as, for example, Poirot in the novels of Agatha Christie) leaves the job, begins to think about something else, and then the idea of ​​explanation comes from the subconscious. Insight. This can happen in a dream, on a walk, and where and if you like. But always unexpected. In science, many of these cases are described, starting with the well -known - about how D.I. Mendeleev dreamed of his periodic system of elements. In detective works at this moment, the detective claps on the forehead and exclaims: "How blind I was!"

In a fantastic detective, events usually develop in this way. There is a mystery (not necessarily associated with a crime, the crime only allows the plot to be more dynamic), the detective or the scientist (often one and the other in one person) builds assumptions, explores evidence and, finally, offers a fantastic idea, for which, in fact, the whole garden was touched. The result of a fantastic investigation is a fantastic discovery, an explanation.

In the example, I will give the novel by Stanislav Lem "Hrymile". The plot of the work is realistic, although formally the action takes place in the near future. The hero of the novel, a former astronaut, investigates a series of strange deaths and scrupulously discovers evidence, as a result of which an explanation arises in the final - quite scientific (everything that Lem describes could happen in reality without any fantasy) and at the same time fantastic. The fantastic detective is generally the back of the reference in which the explanatory role of fantasy is most natural. In the "runny nose" this is the discovery of the influence on the body of the totality of harmless, each in itself, chemical factors.

The discovery of the second type in science does not occur as a result of the consistent work of the mind (usually completed by the act of insight). This is a discovery that they did not expect. They make it by chance - most often when technical capabilities (a new accelerator, a new large telescope, new biological equipment) allow you to look into a deeper (distant) reality. In this case, the role of logic and insight is minimal.

In science fiction, there are also discoveries of the second type. Of course, the fantastic discovery of the second type differs from a similar discovery in science - after all, a science fiction writer puts a mental experiment, the result of which is the detection of an previously unknown phenomenon, and

Such as no one could predict! In 1908, the Russian scientist Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky) published the novel “Red Star”, where he described “Eteroneph”: the Martian spaceship with atomic engines. Even before Ernst Rutherford created the planetary model of the atom!

Using atomic energy in science fiction, many amazing coincidences are associated. For example, Vladimir Nikolsky, who published in 1926 the story “Thousands of Years”, wrote that the first atomic bomb would be blown up in 19451. Herbert Wells in the novel “The Liberated World” (1913) wrote that the first nuclear power plant will enter operation in 1953.

The discovery of the second type was the idea of ​​the mortal danger of the interaction of microorganisms from different planets. Martian in Herbert Wells’s novel “The War of the Worlds” (1897) killed not a battle with earthlings (which earthlings lost), but ordinary earthly bacteria.

The third type of discoveries: “mixed” discoveries, when all the prerequisites for them already exist, but insight, insight (opening the first kind) never occurred, and at this time almost predicted phenomenon is found by accident and independently (discovery of the second kind). Then the correct explanation is found quickly, because the “soil” has already been prepared! This happened, for example, when Anthony Hugaish and Joeelin Bell opened pulsars in 1967 - rapidly rotating neutron stars with a strong magnetic field.

There are many discoveries of the third type in science fiction. Example: opening the pressure of light on solid bodies. The French writers Jacques Le Fore and Antoine Countess opened this effect, publishing the story “Around the Sun” in 1896. Theoretically, the pressure of electromagnetic radiation was predicted by George Maxwell in 1873, but the first real successful experiments Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev, who proved that such pressure exists, were completed only in 1900. Science fiction writers not only “made” the real discovery, but also used it - a ray of light is pushing a spaceship.

Another discovery of the third type: the hyperspace described for the first time John Kempbell in the novel "Trap" (1934). Spaces with more than four dimensions were described to Kempbella, but they were purely mathematical works that, as it seemed, had no access to real physics. Campbell opened high spatial dimensions in the “real fantastic” world and used them to move with super -light speeds.

In the modern quantum theory of strings without multidimensional (11 dimensions!) Spaces are impossible to do. Physical four -dimensional space - time is only a “projection” available to our senses and devices. The question of whether this multidimensionality is only a mathematical abstraction is still open.

Of course, discoveries made on the pages of science fiction works are not limited to the above. In the patent fund of fantastic discoveries there are new types of celestial bodies, and new classes of intelligent and unreasonable creatures, and new laws of physics, chemistry, biology and even history. Science fiction writers “discovered” previously unknown natural phenomena and much more. Will these discoveries be repeated by scientists, or will science abandon most of them? Only time will answer this question. The time, in the stream of which we move to the future, never learned to either change the speed of movement or get ashore ...

1 American clairvoyant Stephen Casey became famous for correctly predicted the date of the end of World War II. Nikolsky made an equally accurate prediction, but Casey is known to everyone (despite the fact that many other predictions turned out to be erroneous), and only historians of science fiction remember only about Nikolsky ...