He says “First, people don’t care much about accuracy in movies.” in reference to why science education won’t make SF better.
This is just wrong. If a movie or any story takes the time and effort to get the science right it enhances the realism of the story and therefore it’s impact. Science education and education in general is so bad that it’s now a wasted effort for most people and the movie makers have responded by making every movie a fantasy.
I’ve thought of Scalzi as a Heinlein type, but he gets it wrong here. Decoupling the science makes every movie an exercise in postmodernism. It’s bad for the movies and it’s bad for the culture.
Ron Moore, who scripted the “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica and was a writer for both ST Deep Space Nine and Voyager revealed a dirty little secret about Star Trek’s “science”: it was all garbage. They didn’t try to write science into the scripts, instead they hired a technobabble consultant and anytime they wanted “technology” in the script they wrote the shorthand “tech” into the line and let him fill out the details as he saw fit:
La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.”
Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.”
La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, and it won’t
work.”
Granted it wasn’t really much of a revelation but it was nice that Moore came clean about it. He said that he deliberately gave BSG a “retro” look because he was sick of the technobabble. “I wanted a phone book to look like a phone book”.
I actually give credit to the Star Trek movie, it had a couple of brief sequences where there was no sound, or at least subdued sound in space.
That makes it more realistic than most space movies you see.
I have noticed that the more I know about a subject the more fanciful my tales when told.
I’m a story teller, that’s how I communicate, and I was a Marine once, and I was pretty good at it, yet when I read the things I sometimes write about my time in, I say to myself “That is complete BULLCRAP!”
Even though it isn’t.
Better science education would just be more fanciful science fiction, even if the foundations are accurate.
I have to say this though.
Partly because I was in the armed services, and before I was in, every male member of my family on the male side had been in the service, I really couldn’t stand watching a “military” movie. I watched pretty much all of them, but there are few that are actually any good.
I can watch the WWII flic’s all day. “The Longest Day” “Midway” “Fighting Seabea’s” and so on. I can watch “appocalypse now” (but that’s less a war flic and more a psychological thriller) “Full Metal Jacket” (best representation of boot camp in any movie ever, helps that R. Lee was a DI in the Vietnam Era.) and a guilty pleasure or two “siege on firebase gloria.” (R. Lee plays Sgt. Major Heffner.) and “platoon,” (probably the only role dylan McDermit didn’t overplay.)
Anyways, I can’t watch a “war” movie without rolling my eyes or outright cursing at the screen. I was actually ejected from the theater while watching “jarhead.” I wanted to google the author, hunt him down, and beat the snot out of him.
blech not platoon, hated platoon, I meant “hamburger hill.”
As for Moore coming clean about the lack of science in sci-fi, I used to joke about this, in a common “game” I engage in in social gaming.
“Things I learned from the movies.”
My favorite is, “no matter the size of the explosion, you will survive it as long as you are jumping when it goes off.”
Another one I enjoy, is the whole “re-route the relay” thing. First the linguistic stupidity of “re-routing” a relay, and the other is that I was a tech for about 10 years (most of you guys seem like tech or engineer or science types so you know this already, but I’m gonna tell it anyways) and I don’t remember ever working on a piece of equipment that didn’t have a “relay box.” meanwhile in TV and Movie’s every advanced culture has horrible service maintenance capabilities.
All commonly repaired, or corrected items MUST be in the most dangerous part of the equipment being repaired or reset.
You got a space ship? Lets put the relay box right next to the nacel’s and only accesable in vacuum.
You got A power plant? Put the fuse box in the middle of the fusion reactor and behind the “chompers.”
“Galaxy Quest” did a good job of mocking this truth.
I am ex Army and my vote for best war Movie is Blackhawk Down.
Even if they did tone down the body count on the Skinnies.
I was looking at the new Call of Duty game the other day and wondering why a game with a bazillion dolllar budget could not spend a couple thou to hire a small arms expert to get their weapons models right.
Shit, I could improve them by orders of magnitude myself and I am nobody.
Part of why I hate FPS. the “rise” in burst is WAY under stated.
Then again, it’s a game so I guess you are a 450lb rifle ninja in the game.
In reality (I’m a pretty large guy) I couldn’t put all three shots in burst within a foot of eachother.
MP,
I talk myself down for a number of reasons, but I WAS Marine, and I AM Marine, and these guys now ARE my brothers and sisters.
Army might not have that same overwhelming ideology, but you ARE.
Very few people have ever been.
I happened to land in the Marines, no matter how much I volunteered, at a time when there was no opportunity to actually do my job.
A few months after I left ( I wasn’t forced out, I left, I’m still 1A if I were young enough) was 9/11.
Not PANIC attacks, but numerous anxiety attacks.
I’m a lousy civilian because I was a pretty good Marine (got the shiny stuff to prove it) and on 9/11, though I know it’s irrational, I was a civilian after having been a Marine.
BUT DAMNIT!!! I should have still been Marine, and I should have done something! IT WAS MY JOB! I should have DONE SOMETHING!
Service, especially for people like me (true believers) is a blessing, a curse, and. . . something else.
I’m a large man, and affraid of no man, but I get misty and tear up regularly, unless I have to act in defense of others.
sorry for yapping about it, I’m going through a tough time, but.
If you served, and you BELIEVED while serving.
That is something very special..
They, the ones who were never in don’t know what it is to sit and burn on a tarmac watching planes land and leave, or see their plane land, and sit, only to be recalled, cuz your orders were recalled.
They don’t know what it is to stand on ship in alphas with a rifle, pretty and deadly.
They don’t understand the cruelty of EATING!
Those in service are more stern while EATING, than civvies who think they are stern moms and dads.
THEY don’t understand the pain of being safe.
They don’t understand the philosophy of “it should have been me, but thank god it’s not.”
They don’t understand, it’s not their fault.
The reason I hate Star Trek isn’t the bad science, it’s the bad pot o’ message that seems to come free with each serving. It tastes like crap.
Douglas: You’re not alone, about Jarhead. And the more servicemembers come back from abroad, the worse Andrew Swofford’s “I sat in the desert and did nothing and boy it was rough!!” riff looks.
To the original topic, though- if you want to read some SF stories by someone who actually did go there and do that, look at David Drake’s stuff.
Douglas said:
“I watched pretty much all of them, but there are few that are actually any good.”
Hmm, Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima Das Boot.
I have Hamburger Hill on DVD. The 101st had many casualties but dammit they got that hill. And they didn’t even have any hamburger helper.
Its just lazy writing, plugging together cliches and standard story templates that causes this, not poor understanding of science.
This has been mentioned on these boards before, but the environment, and the challenges it represents can be a very interesting plot element, a character of the story in its own right.
However, its far easier for scriptwriters to just mash together their old, reused and tired templates in different dressings, rather than actually exercising their brain to come up with something new.
Very few seem to realize what a fertile ground this is for story development, compared to the tired old human interactions that everyone has seen in hundred variations gazillion times.
Mythbusters in a feature film would be far more interesting than the seventh comeback of Star Trek.
“They didn’t try to write science into the scripts, instead they hired a technobabble consultant and anytime they wanted “technology” in the script they wrote the shorthand “tech” into the line and let him fill out the details as he saw fit:”
Interestingly, this afternoon I listened to the producer of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ says much the same thing about his show…
…Except they go to much greater lengths to make the ‘tech’ (or basic science) right or plausible. They know full well that a lot of knowledgeable people are watching.
““Galaxy Quest” did a good job of mocking this truth.”
Then there are RE-design issues. In ST: The Motion Picture, when Kirk learned that phasers now can’t work if the warp drive is inoperative, it seemed to me that his response should have been more akin to:
“Whose blanking idea was that?? I’d be dead six times over, if that had always been true!”
Events of the next movie suggest that someone agreed.
And note that almost everyone stands for the duration of their shift on the bridge of Galaxy-class starships (perhaps a design idea from a non-humanoid who has no physical issues with that?)…in a Universe where history proves that bridge crews invariably get bounced everywhere in an engagement…
@reader: Considering G-d-knows-what chemicals are in that rocket exhaust, I’ll pass.
Science, schmience. What most new films & TV need is better writing and and MUCH better acting.
Star Wars is an old fashioned horse opera, set in space. Just on a much bigger scale, with light sabers and X-Wing Fighters replacing Colt 45s and Horses.
(the evil land baron is stealing all the water rights and taking control of the town but in the end, the orphaned farm boy saves the School Marm from the land baron’s gunslinger, who had killed the orphan’s Paw)
But as good as Star Wars was (if you’re a fan at all) it’s NOT High Noon, or even Rio Lobo. Nobody nowadays, is Gary Cooper, John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart.
It’s not just science missing from science fiction, it’s class, effort and ability. But it’s missing from MOST modern productions.
Interestingly, this afternoon I listened to the producer of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ says much the same thing about his show…
…Except they go to much greater lengths to make the ‘tech’ (or basic science) right or plausible. They know full well that a lot of knowledgeable people are watching.
Very few Hollywood writers have science degrees and very few scientists can write scintillating stories involving science. JM Stravinski went to a great deal of trouble to get the tech right or at least plausible in Babylon V – he outlawed exploding consoles from the get-go, fer example – and it’s regarded as one of the most “realistic” science fiction series ever written. But he’s still not a scientist and he made some pretty glaring errors in part because of ignorance but also because there are some things that just require dramatic license to excite the audience.
there are some things that just require dramatic license to excite the audience.
You do not have to compromise on science to have that.
It would help if more people understood basic statistical techniques, appreciated the value of a double-blind trial and were sceptical about improbable claims concerning cures and breakthroughs.
Judd Apatow films are not all about the raunch – not sure how you come to that idea. His best directorial film, Knocked Up, has a a few trashy times, but its theme of a Peter Pan type eventually having to grow older and accept responsibility for his decisions is a good story, and it was the rare film that most women and men could like together, neither chick-flick nor gross-a-thon. A lot of his other movies treads similar ground. I love raunch, and I wish there were more of it out there – the world needs more teenage sex comedies in these depressing times
He says “First, people don’t care much about accuracy in movies.” in reference to why science education won’t make SF better.
This is just wrong. If a movie or any story takes the time and effort to get the science right it enhances the realism of the story and therefore it’s impact. Science education and education in general is so bad that it’s now a wasted effort for most people and the movie makers have responded by making every movie a fantasy.
I’ve thought of Scalzi as a Heinlein type, but he gets it wrong here. Decoupling the science makes every movie an exercise in postmodernism. It’s bad for the movies and it’s bad for the culture.
Ron Moore, who scripted the “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica and was a writer for both ST Deep Space Nine and Voyager revealed a dirty little secret about Star Trek’s “science”: it was all garbage. They didn’t try to write science into the scripts, instead they hired a technobabble consultant and anytime they wanted “technology” in the script they wrote the shorthand “tech” into the line and let him fill out the details as he saw fit:
La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.”
Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.”
La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, and it won’t
work.”
Picard: “Well, then we’re doomed.”
http://scifiwire.com/2009/10/ron-moore-calls-star-trek.php
Granted it wasn’t really much of a revelation but it was nice that Moore came clean about it. He said that he deliberately gave BSG a “retro” look because he was sick of the technobabble. “I wanted a phone book to look like a phone book”.
I actually give credit to the Star Trek movie, it had a couple of brief sequences where there was no sound, or at least subdued sound in space.
That makes it more realistic than most space movies you see.
I have noticed that the more I know about a subject the more fanciful my tales when told.
I’m a story teller, that’s how I communicate, and I was a Marine once, and I was pretty good at it, yet when I read the things I sometimes write about my time in, I say to myself “That is complete BULLCRAP!”
Even though it isn’t.
Better science education would just be more fanciful science fiction, even if the foundations are accurate.
I have to say this though.
Partly because I was in the armed services, and before I was in, every male member of my family on the male side had been in the service, I really couldn’t stand watching a “military” movie. I watched pretty much all of them, but there are few that are actually any good.
I can watch the WWII flic’s all day. “The Longest Day” “Midway” “Fighting Seabea’s” and so on. I can watch “appocalypse now” (but that’s less a war flic and more a psychological thriller) “Full Metal Jacket” (best representation of boot camp in any movie ever, helps that R. Lee was a DI in the Vietnam Era.) and a guilty pleasure or two “siege on firebase gloria.” (R. Lee plays Sgt. Major Heffner.) and “platoon,” (probably the only role dylan McDermit didn’t overplay.)
Anyways, I can’t watch a “war” movie without rolling my eyes or outright cursing at the screen. I was actually ejected from the theater while watching “jarhead.” I wanted to google the author, hunt him down, and beat the snot out of him.
blech not platoon, hated platoon, I meant “hamburger hill.”
As for Moore coming clean about the lack of science in sci-fi, I used to joke about this, in a common “game” I engage in in social gaming.
“Things I learned from the movies.”
My favorite is, “no matter the size of the explosion, you will survive it as long as you are jumping when it goes off.”
Another one I enjoy, is the whole “re-route the relay” thing. First the linguistic stupidity of “re-routing” a relay, and the other is that I was a tech for about 10 years (most of you guys seem like tech or engineer or science types so you know this already, but I’m gonna tell it anyways) and I don’t remember ever working on a piece of equipment that didn’t have a “relay box.” meanwhile in TV and Movie’s every advanced culture has horrible service maintenance capabilities.
All commonly repaired, or corrected items MUST be in the most dangerous part of the equipment being repaired or reset.
You got a space ship? Lets put the relay box right next to the nacel’s and only accesable in vacuum.
You got A power plant? Put the fuse box in the middle of the fusion reactor and behind the “chompers.”
“Galaxy Quest” did a good job of mocking this truth.
I am ex Army and my vote for best war Movie is Blackhawk Down.
Even if they did tone down the body count on the Skinnies.
I was looking at the new Call of Duty game the other day and wondering why a game with a bazillion dolllar budget could not spend a couple thou to hire a small arms expert to get their weapons models right.
Shit, I could improve them by orders of magnitude myself and I am nobody.
Part of why I hate FPS. the “rise” in burst is WAY under stated.
Then again, it’s a game so I guess you are a 450lb rifle ninja in the game.
In reality (I’m a pretty large guy) I couldn’t put all three shots in burst within a foot of eachother.
MP,
I talk myself down for a number of reasons, but I WAS Marine, and I AM Marine, and these guys now ARE my brothers and sisters.
Army might not have that same overwhelming ideology, but you ARE.
Very few people have ever been.
I happened to land in the Marines, no matter how much I volunteered, at a time when there was no opportunity to actually do my job.
A few months after I left ( I wasn’t forced out, I left, I’m still 1A if I were young enough) was 9/11.
Not PANIC attacks, but numerous anxiety attacks.
I’m a lousy civilian because I was a pretty good Marine (got the shiny stuff to prove it) and on 9/11, though I know it’s irrational, I was a civilian after having been a Marine.
BUT DAMNIT!!! I should have still been Marine, and I should have done something! IT WAS MY JOB! I should have DONE SOMETHING!
Service, especially for people like me (true believers) is a blessing, a curse, and. . . something else.
I’m a large man, and affraid of no man, but I get misty and tear up regularly, unless I have to act in defense of others.
sorry for yapping about it, I’m going through a tough time, but.
If you served, and you BELIEVED while serving.
That is something very special..
They, the ones who were never in don’t know what it is to sit and burn on a tarmac watching planes land and leave, or see their plane land, and sit, only to be recalled, cuz your orders were recalled.
They don’t know what it is to stand on ship in alphas with a rifle, pretty and deadly.
They don’t understand the cruelty of EATING!
Those in service are more stern while EATING, than civvies who think they are stern moms and dads.
THEY don’t understand the pain of being safe.
They don’t understand the philosophy of “it should have been me, but thank god it’s not.”
They don’t understand, it’s not their fault.
The reason I hate Star Trek isn’t the bad science, it’s the bad pot o’ message that seems to come free with each serving. It tastes like crap.
Douglas: You’re not alone, about Jarhead. And the more servicemembers come back from abroad, the worse Andrew Swofford’s “I sat in the desert and did nothing and boy it was rough!!” riff looks.
To the original topic, though- if you want to read some SF stories by someone who actually did go there and do that, look at David Drake’s stuff.
Douglas said:
“I watched pretty much all of them, but there are few that are actually any good.”
Hmm, Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima Das Boot.
I have Hamburger Hill on DVD. The 101st had many casualties but dammit they got that hill. And they didn’t even have any hamburger helper.
Its just lazy writing, plugging together cliches and standard story templates that causes this, not poor understanding of science.
This has been mentioned on these boards before, but the environment, and the challenges it represents can be a very interesting plot element, a character of the story in its own right.
However, its far easier for scriptwriters to just mash together their old, reused and tired templates in different dressings, rather than actually exercising their brain to come up with something new.
Very few seem to realize what a fertile ground this is for story development, compared to the tired old human interactions that everyone has seen in hundred variations gazillion times.
Mythbusters in a feature film would be far more interesting than the seventh comeback of Star Trek.
“They didn’t try to write science into the scripts, instead they hired a technobabble consultant and anytime they wanted “technology” in the script they wrote the shorthand “tech” into the line and let him fill out the details as he saw fit:”
Interestingly, this afternoon I listened to the producer of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ says much the same thing about his show…
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200911207
…Except they go to much greater lengths to make the ‘tech’ (or basic science) right or plausible. They know full well that a lot of knowledgeable people are watching.
““Galaxy Quest” did a good job of mocking this truth.”
Then there are RE-design issues. In ST: The Motion Picture, when Kirk learned that phasers now can’t work if the warp drive is inoperative, it seemed to me that his response should have been more akin to:
“Whose blanking idea was that?? I’d be dead six times over, if that had always been true!”
Events of the next movie suggest that someone agreed.
And note that almost everyone stands for the duration of their shift on the bridge of Galaxy-class starships (perhaps a design idea from a non-humanoid who has no physical issues with that?)…in a Universe where history proves that bridge crews invariably get bounced everywhere in an engagement…
Sheesh, this deserves to get out !
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2009_09_07/2009_09_07_Labor_Day_wiener_cam.wmv
@reader: Considering G-d-knows-what chemicals are in that rocket exhaust, I’ll pass.
Science, schmience. What most new films & TV need is better writing and and MUCH better acting.
Star Wars is an old fashioned horse opera, set in space. Just on a much bigger scale, with light sabers and X-Wing Fighters replacing Colt 45s and Horses.
(the evil land baron is stealing all the water rights and taking control of the town but in the end, the orphaned farm boy saves the School Marm from the land baron’s gunslinger, who had killed the orphan’s Paw)
But as good as Star Wars was (if you’re a fan at all) it’s NOT High Noon, or even Rio Lobo. Nobody nowadays, is Gary Cooper, John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart.
It’s not just science missing from science fiction, it’s class, effort and ability. But it’s missing from MOST modern productions.
Interestingly, this afternoon I listened to the producer of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ says much the same thing about his show…
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200911207
…Except they go to much greater lengths to make the ‘tech’ (or basic science) right or plausible. They know full well that a lot of knowledgeable people are watching.
Very few Hollywood writers have science degrees and very few scientists can write scintillating stories involving science. JM Stravinski went to a great deal of trouble to get the tech right or at least plausible in Babylon V – he outlawed exploding consoles from the get-go, fer example – and it’s regarded as one of the most “realistic” science fiction series ever written. But he’s still not a scientist and he made some pretty glaring errors in part because of ignorance but also because there are some things that just require dramatic license to excite the audience.
there are some things that just require dramatic license to excite the audience.
You do not have to compromise on science to have that.
It would help if more people understood basic statistical techniques, appreciated the value of a double-blind trial and were sceptical about improbable claims concerning cures and breakthroughs.
Judd Apatow films are not all about the raunch – not sure how you come to that idea. His best directorial film, Knocked Up, has a a few trashy times, but its theme of a Peter Pan type eventually having to grow older and accept responsibility for his decisions is a good story, and it was the rare film that most women and men could like together, neither chick-flick nor gross-a-thon. A lot of his other movies treads similar ground. I love raunch, and I wish there were more of it out there – the world needs more teenage sex comedies in these depressing times