Did science influence sci-fi authors or did they influence science ?

Question

Stories have been written about men on the moon long before we actually went there. The Time Machine involved scientific facts that were unheard of and thought of as fantasy at the time of publication.

Did these fantasy writers inspire the scientists to see if what they wrote about was feasable or did the nucleus for their stories come from new scientific breakthroughs

Answer 1

It is both... Lets take Arthur C. Clarke for example, the author of the "Odyssy" series of books. Mr. Clarke is credited with writing the research paper which started the geostationary satellite industry. Think of everything we use satellites for now....

In his famous books/movie, we see how closely his descriptions of Jupiter's moon actually turned out to be, when NASA's probes went flying by. In his book, the computer runs the spaceship (the 'infamaous' HAL)... today we don't think anything about talking computers... and speech recognition softwar has been around for several years now... allowing us to talk to our computers.

How about Star Trek? Do you remember in the original series... the data storage for computers resembled, surprisingly, a 3.5 inch floppy. And there are books devoted to the 'science' of Star Trek... from warp engines and on.... NASA named on of the shuttles Enterprise...hehehe.

Captain Nemo and his Nautilus were written about long before our nuclear subs were thought of.

Science Fiction is one area of writing where the writer draws on (many times) existing science, sometimes predicting where it will go... or dream up a whole new area of science.... and then we see our actual science in some cases catch up with, and even exceed, the stories.

Answer 2

The majority of Sci fi is influenced by science. Some of the top authors are actually scientists working on the cutting edge of science, and use it to enhance their stories.

The Star Trek series, although much laughed at for its acting in the original series, was used to present philosophical, moral and scientific application issues in the form of entertainment for the uneducated masses.

There are exceptions where flights of fancy have been written as sci fi and then created a worthwhile debate, your two examples are excellent points.

Answer 3

Rene Descartes -Has been referenced in prevalent sequence like 'Ghost In A Shell' and 'action picture star Trek'. He became into in all hazard the 1st individual to conceive the assumption of mechanical human beings (robots or androids), that's precise on 'Discourse on the perspective'. Emanuel Kant -Philosophy of area and Time. those philosophers in specific have had a definite lasting consequence on the Sci-Fi sort. H.R Giger -Surrealist artist who pioneered the 'Bio-mechanical' sort, he additionally designed units and creatures for the 'Alien' movies. -His seen sort has been popularized and imitated many cases. It has very practically grow to be a ubiquitous alien seen archetype (eg: Zurg).

Answer 4

In my opinion science-fiction cannot influence science, which is a rational process by itself.
On the other hands, many S-F writers are scientists (Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Kim Stanley Robinson etc.)

Answer 5

Many scientists today studied their craft because they wanted the world to be the way they read about. So sci-fi definitely influenced science.

Answer 6

I think sci-fi influences scientist. People think up cool gadgets, etc..and scientists think...hmmm...how could we do that.

Look at the star trek communicators and modern day flip phones. You know some nerdy tech guy who watched star trek came up with the flip phone.

Answer 7

They influenced science.

Answer 8

Could be both.

Answer 9

i'd say both!