The Science of Orlando Jax

The Science Index

1. Gravity II - orbits
2. Other Dimensions I - sliding doors
3. Time II - the Claw Chronometre
4. Time I - time dilation
5. Gravity I - a mysterious force

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Science in the world of Orlando Jax.

Science fiction is telling stories about entities (sometimes people) doing things in worlds that are different to the one we know. The world is different because some aspect of it has been re-imagined by the author. This re-imagining can take many forms:

1. Advances in hard science that allow us to do new things such time travel and travel faster than the speed of light as in The Forever War by Joe Haldeman,
2. An event that changes history and takes a world along a new path into an alternate future e.g. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling,
3. A shift in a being's physiology that creates new opportunities and threats such as the gender fluidity in the people of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin or psyching in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester,
4. Relationships with spiritual beings that possess powers such as Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, and
5. Ideas that are simply amazing. Look no further than The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.

So the science creates that difference that allows the story to be. The author builds his or her framework and then moves the narrative around that context to tell the tale. The results can be spectacular and anything from highlighting a particular human condition by casting it into a new form, to presenting ideas that are genuinely new to human knowledge and understanding. Science fiction can expose us in the present and narrate our future.

In this section I'm taking a very practical look at the science that starts the hard science path - the physics we know today along with the issues we have to overcome to achieve some of our dreams. In a story of course you can rely on the fact that this has already happened. I'm very interested though in how we (humans) might actually make it happen.

I'll leave you with this great drawing from Jean-Claud Meziers and the Valerian books. First published in 1967, you can see echoes of its ideas in many science fiction features including the Star Wars movies. Valerian presents some genuinely new ideas to the world and is remarkable because these ideas are visualised.