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FOREWORD

“Knowledge is a commodity to be shared.

For knowledge to pay dividends,

it should not remain the monopoly of the select few.”


—Moutasem Algharati



“Write what you know” is bullshit, pure and simple. We have long left this idea behind in the days of instant research. Why go to China to tour and take notes for a novel, when you can jump online and get 360-degree views of the Great Wall from the comfort of your own home…in your jammies…while listening to Bob Dylan in the background? (Dylan is famously banned in China.) And sure, you could write off that trip on your taxes as a business expense, but in our pandemic society, why mess around with all the things that come with international travel?

“Write what you can thoroughly research” is a much better mantra to work from. When writing weird westerns, historical paranormals, or retro sci-fi noirs, I do an exhausting amount of research to get facts right. I have maps all over my office, and shelves filled with essay collections, biographies, and encyclopedias dedicated to famous people, dead languages, and lost civilizations. Why? Because more often than not, someone reading an anthology like this is an armchair historian or expert on something, and they’ll call me or any author out on incorrect “facts.”

(You know you do. Don’t sit back there and say you don’t.)

And that’s not actually a bad thing. It’s important to get facts right, even when playing with historical fiction. Saying it’s an “alt-history” or “secret history” can only take an author so far before they lose creditability. Some books paint history with a light brush; others make sure every detail is as accurate. As an editor, I have to trust authors did their homework, but often, I will challenge a historical “fact.” (This gets scary when you’re editing your idols.)

But this idea of researching for accuracy becomes a slippery slope when you’re no longer talking about the past, but the future. How does one research that which is not known or not yet created? This is what every science fiction writer must contend with when they sit down to build their future societies and technology.

As a reader, I’m sure you’ve wondered where authors come up with all their details about planets and space travel and science-y stuff. (No? Just me?) Well, I wondered right up until I became a writer myself and had to start coming up with imagined facts. I discovered early on there are three main sources for acquiring “future facts.” Hitting the books, whether physical or digital, is usually an author’s first go-to. Next, turning to other authors who write in a similar genre you do. Finally, seeking out scientists and the like who have an expertise that you can tap into.

I began my future research with the short story “The Devil You Haven’t Met,” my first attempt to write hard science fiction. In it, I wanted to create my own form of space travel based off ideas the science community was exploring at the time. When I googled “warp drive think tanks,” I found blogs for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and another at UC Berkeley; both seemed to be tackling the theoretical concepts of warp technology from different directions.

Dr. Katherine M. Benson, at Radcliffe, was exploring “M theory,” which, according to her bio, is “an intrinsically eleven-dimensional understanding of forces [that] can lead to our known forces in four-dimensional space-time.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Dr. Raphael Bousso’s bio lists him as working on “a surprisingly strong and counterintuitive relation between quantum-mechanical information and the geometry of spacetime.” I thought to myself, What if these two kids got together and built a type of trans-space engine? The Putnam Engine strips all matter around it, leaving only time. Without matter to slow it down, the engine moves quickly along the timeline like a bullet train. I’m obviously no scientist, and I have no idea if anything these two were working on would actually create the engine I theorized, but I loved the process of being inspired by real science and the possibilities it contains. I’ve never met either of them, nor discussed my story with them, but I did attribute them in the story as the “creators” of the Putnam Engine.

Being a new writer at the time, I had yet to build up a collection of scientists to review and critique my ideas. But I did know an author/editor/scientist-type person I could add to my cadre of experts. David Lee Summers is a Senior Observing Associate at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona. Summers—as I’ve mentioned in my previous introductions—edited Tales of the Talisman magazine, but I also discovered, as an astronomer, he was a great source for running ideas by. He can often see things from both the scientist’s and the writer’s perspective.

Authors who are—or were—scientists are not an uncommon occurrence. They can be a great resource when it comes to making sure your future facts are correct. Author Alan Dean Foster told me of one he often consults with:

“When writing the novelization of The Chronicles of Riddick, I was concerned how the extreme rise in temperature on the planet Crematoria would affect the atmosphere that the characters would continue to breathe. So I reached out to Gregory Benford, [science fiction] writer and astrophysicist, to confirm my suspicions that the heat indicated in the film would likely not only be unbreathable but possibly destroy the atmosphere itself. Which he did.”

When I started writing the titular story for Gunfight on Europa Station, my previous Baen space western anthology, I consulted a couple of my peers, including Summers and fellow author C. Stuart Hardwick, for information on Europa. Summers sent me some amazing links such as to solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/overview/ and solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/in-depth/ while Hardwick made sure I knew the all-important facts like “radiation on the surface of Europa would kill a human in about a day.” Both helped me lay the foundation of my story, but I needed more. I needed an actual specialist on Europa research.

Luckily, I’d met one such researcher at a con in Denver.

Spaceflight Historian Hugh S. Gregory has a long pedigree when it comes to all things non-terrestrial. Among his many and varied credentials, Hugh’s bio lists he was “the Mars Society Engineering Team’s Chief Training Documents Editor, Chief Cartographer and Waypoint Database Curator for both the MDRS and FMARS research stations.” But when I first met him, he was just a guy who gave my son some amazing—and very exclusive—highly detailed photo prints of nebulae, taken with the Hubble telescope, for him to bring to his elementary school’s science class show-n-tell. (Believe me when I say these were not photos that just anyone could get at that time.) I’ve run into Hugh at many cons, and he always has new space exploration stuff to talk about. He was the guy I needed to chat with about Europa.

He, in turn, introduced me to Daniel D. Dubrick, Aerospace Historian. Together, the three of us created an email chain about everything known and/or suspected about Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. They provided data on salinity to ice ratios on Europa’s surface and what “seasons” on the moon would look like: “Being 75 million miles closer to the Sun in its Summer, Jupiter would see a tiny increase in the solar radiation received and the Sun would be marginally brighter as a result.…This translates into watts received per meter square at the equator on Jupiter or one of the Galilean to 55.8 W/m2 in the Summer and 45.9 W/m2 in the winter.” I cannot express my gratitude at how much better my story turned out due to their efforts, and the efforts of those mentioned above.

It’s also pretty obvious that I am far from the only author who can make this claim. The idea for this topic came from conversations I had with Cliff Winnig, one of the authors in the anthology you’re about to read, High Noon on Proxima B. He had been exulting on the research he did for the anthology’s titular piece. He cited astronomer Ruslan Belikov of NASA Ames “for many discussions about Proxima Centauri and the Alpha Centauri system and their potential habitability.” Cliff said, “Rus has been a terrific source of information on what is known and what is possible.” He also accredited “the SETI Institute of Mountain View, California, for the many years of science talks they’ve hosted, which have included more than a few talks by planetary scientists.”

These future facts aren’t just related to technologies. A futurist, such as the likes of David Brin, will often start with the past, see where things floundered, and imagine a world where such things could be corrected. He writes in his novel, The Postman, “Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.” Such can be said of authors writing religions, governments, and alien races. One of my favorite series is the Well World books from the late Jack L. Chalker. In it, Chalker created over three hundred races, each with a different society. No two are alike, but each can be traced back to a system of rule we, as a people, have tried on our little blue marble—theocracies, dictatorships, rule by combat, or complete lack of any central government. Just from a sociology standpoint, it’s a fun series to explore. For many a science fiction author, building a future society is sometimes more fun (and takes longer) than writing the actual novel.

As the epitaph above states, information wants to be shared and should. For what is the point of accumulating knowledge just to sit with it and never pass it along to others? This is what infuriates me about movies or shows. There’s not a scientist alive who doesn’t pick apart every science fiction work to determine which writers actually did their research and which ones just pulled the proverbial string theory from their asses. The same can be said about shows featuring soldiers, police officers, FBI agents, doctors, and yes, even writers. Nothing upsets me more than seeing portrayals of authors where someone sits down and “births” a best-selling novel. Just like the famous commercial said, “That’s not how it works; that’s not how any of this works.”

So, authors should take great care when they write our future facts, and be sure that they’re investing the time to build our plausible worlds on known science. Not just because they want to show off how smart or creative they are. Not because they got various degrees in engineering, physics, sociology, psychology, or a plethora of other fields before finding their calling as scribes. They should ultimately take care because readers ask it of them. Demand it even, at times. And readers deserve the best future authors can give them, or they’ll post a negative review faster than my proposed Putnam Drive.

(You know you will. I see you there with your finger hovering over the “enter” key. Don’t think I can’t.)


Faithfully Submitted,

DB

12/22/21


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