Excuse me if I don't get up, but I'm finding the latest, greatest news in physics, the confirmation of gravity waves, a tad, well, underwhelming.
I know I should be excited by the effects of two black holes merging 1.3 billion light years away like neopolitan ice-cream in the sun (okay, neopolitan has three colours, but its the best analogy I can think of off the cuff) but, seriously, if the effect is about the same as a bacteria farting, why bother?
I'm very much of the opinion that science is not helpful to science fiction. Each discovery may confirm a particular hypothesis, but discounts a potentially large set of ifs, buts and maybes. By confirming gravity waves as something that affects atoms like, say, me breathing lightly on the Rocky Mountains, we've just made rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour not just less likely but, somehow, sillier if I were to suggest it.
And rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour is what I deal in.
However, on a slightly more exciting note, Night Lights: An Anthology of Short Fiction: First Contact, Conspiracy, and Space Opera, in which I have the story Shooting the Messenger is out now from Geminid Press LLC. Buy! Buy! Buy!
I know I should be excited by the effects of two black holes merging 1.3 billion light years away like neopolitan ice-cream in the sun (okay, neopolitan has three colours, but its the best analogy I can think of off the cuff) but, seriously, if the effect is about the same as a bacteria farting, why bother?
I'm very much of the opinion that science is not helpful to science fiction. Each discovery may confirm a particular hypothesis, but discounts a potentially large set of ifs, buts and maybes. By confirming gravity waves as something that affects atoms like, say, me breathing lightly on the Rocky Mountains, we've just made rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour not just less likely but, somehow, sillier if I were to suggest it.
And rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour is what I deal in.
However, on a slightly more exciting note, Night Lights: An Anthology of Short Fiction: First Contact, Conspiracy, and Space Opera, in which I have the story Shooting the Messenger is out now from Geminid Press LLC. Buy! Buy! Buy!
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