Rollback combines medical advances and alien contact to tell a decent human story

Robert J. Sawyer’s Rollback (2007) takes a couple of familiar science fiction tropes and blends them together into a well-told human story. One is the discovery of (and communication with) alien life via signals received from a distant star. The other is the concept of radical life extension, in the form of a [...]

“Science fictiony ideas” can motivate physicists

Theoretical physicist Ben Schumacher recently gave a lecture (described in this story) in which he points out the motivational value of science fiction, saying, “Plenty of really interesting research has been motivated by science fictiony ideas.” Elaborating this point a little more:
Even the most outlandish science fiction stories can spur very real questions for [...]

The voice of that SF master, Stanislaw Lem

My experience with Stanislaw Lem’s work has been limited so far, but the few times I have read one of his books I’ve gotten the inescapable impression that I was reading something written by one of science fiction’s true masters. Lem’s writing is full of philosophical depth and intellectual intensity; and there are emotional [...]

Sagan’s classic tale of first contact

It’s pretty common to hear the phrase “the book was better than the movie,” and usually it’s true; because no matter what the quality of a book is, Hollywood is usually all too willing to lower it by several notches in order to make a movie that appeals to the masses. In the case [...]

The Listeners, for anyone who’s listening

James Gunn’s The Listeners, published in 1972, is a fictional tale of a SETI-style program to search for transmissions from intelligent alien civilizations. I have always seen this book described as almost a sister to Carl Sagan’s Contact; and I wish I could provide some comparison, but I can’t since I’ve never read the [...]