Date: September 29, 2011
Title: Science Fiction and Science Fact
Podcaster: Katie Peterson and Nick Sagan
Organization: Adler Planetarium
Links: www.adlerplanetarium.org
www.adlerplanetarium.org/podcasts
Description: Science fiction has played a larger role than most of use realize; from its influence on science fact to its ability to inspire. Nick Sagan joins in on this conversation about the impact of science fiction.
Bio: The Adler Planetarium – America’s First Planetarium – was founded in 1930 by Chicago business leader Max Adler. The museum is home to three full-size theaters, including the all-digital projection Definiti Space Theater, the Sky Theater which utilizes a Zeiss optical projector, and the Universe 3D Theater. It is also home to one of the world’s most important antique instrument collections. The Adler is a recognized leader in science education, with a focus on inspiring young people, particularly women and minorities, to pursue careers in science.
Visit our website: http://www.adlerplanetarium.org
Sponsor: This episode of 365 Days of Astronomy is sponsored by Wayne Robertson, who encourages you to join him in supporting this great podcast!
Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days Of Astronomy” has also been brought to you by lifeboat.com.
Transcript:
Katie
Welcome to a special edition of the Adler Planetarium’s bi-weekly podcast, Adler Night and Day. The Adler Night and Day podcast provides listeners with a glimpse of what they can see in the night sky, updates on recent solar weather, and riveting conversation. For the 365 Days of Astronomy, we’re just concentrating on the riveting conversation. Without further ado, I’m your host Katie, and in this episode we’re talking to Nick Sagan. Thanks for joining us Nick.
Nick
Thanks for having me Katie. It’s a pleasure to talk to you!
Katie
Excellent! So before we get going to far… what we’re going to be talking about today is kind of the relationship between science fiction and science fact and you have been, um, it’s been a big part of your career. So, before we get too far can you give us a bit of an overview about your background?
Nick
Sure, well, I’m Nick Sagan. I’m a science fiction writer. I’ve written some novels, I’ve written for television, some Star Trek episodes. Now, this planetarium show. I didn’t really know what I wanted to be growing up. But, my dad’s a scientist and my mother is a writer so it kind of naturally fit together. My dad was Carl Sagan, the astronomer.
Katie
Yes, he was. For people who might have caught that… he is Carl Sagan’s son. Um, can you… you got started really early with writing. Can you talk about some of the things that you started with and how your career has sort of evolved over the last several years.
Nick
Sure, it depends on really, how early. I remember writing a thing about lions when I was three years old… I don’t think you mean that early. I, um, I was drawn to writing early on. I didn’t know it was going to be a career for a long time. I actually, I went to high school and I was really frustrated with my schooling. I think I was a little spoiled to have such a great teacher in Dad.
Katie
Maybe a little bit.
Nick
A little bit! But I didn’t know what I was going to do and I actually, I stumbled across a television show called The Prisoner. Which is Patrick McGoohan, 1960s, very weird spy, kind of science fiction show. And it was like a light went on over my head and I said “Wow, this is what I want to do. It was the first time I could actually tell a story that was actually entertaining but had an ethical, social component to it. You could do something that could be fun on the surface but the deeper you look the more you would find. So I said, “that’s what I want to do!” and everyone said, “that’s great, Nick, but you’re failing high school.” So, I actually dropped out and I enrolled in community college and got on the Dean’s list for the first time in a long time. Transferred to UCLA film school, graduated Summa Cum Laude, very motivated about what I wanted to do. I was going to go into the production program there but I had written a script and the head of the writing program at UCLA, Richard Walters said, ah, “So, a Nick, do you mind if I show this script to an agent?”
Katie
Nice.
Nick
It was very nice! And I said how dare you compromise my artistic integrity! I said, “Please! Show it to the agent!”
Katie
But you told all your friends you said, “How dare you!”
Nick
Yes! Yes! I pounded my fist! But, no, I was very lucky because that agent contacted me the next day.
Katie
Wow!
Nick
And, ah, he represented me. And that script went out and got optioned. And off of that option I was hired to adapt a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card called Ender’s Game.
Katie
Oh, wow!
Nick
It’s a wonderful story. Though that script didn’t get made it lead to Star Trek and I was writing episodes of Next Generation and the Star Trek Voyager and just off and running. I started writing novels, graphic novels and stuff like that.
Katie
So, through all of this, you really kind of um, and particularly culminating with here at the Adler. You’ve written The Searcher, which is our newest show. Most of these are all, or at least a chunk of them use science fiction to convey science fact. Can you talk a little bit about that relationship, of how these to can intertwine to really kind of benefit people.
Nick
I’d love to talk about that actually!
Katie
Yes, good!
Nick
It’s one of my favorite topics! Ah, well, there’s a wonderfully, reciprocal relationship between science fiction and science fact and I think that science fiction doesn’t get necessarily enough credit or enough people realize how much springs from it. You look at the father of modern rocketry, Robert Goddard, he’s an H.G.Wells fan, would write fan letters to him. My dad was a little boy reading the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars books. About Martian princesses and green-skinned , four armed warriors with swords. Fanciful scenes that captured a boy’s imagination and the main character, John Carter, was able to get to Mars just by wishing it. And my dad, as a little kid in New York, looked up at Mars and said, “If I’m going to get to Mars I’m going to need something more potent than wishes. So that led to his scientific career and that happens a lot. You know, there are robot designers that are only robot designers because they saw Star Wars and fell in love with R2D2 and C3PO and, you know, one only needs to inspire the other. Science will make a break through and that will inspire new science fiction and then those writers will inspire new scientists. And, it’s just been a joy for me to be a part of this dance! You know, of all the projects I’ve worked on, you know, science is part of it. But nothing quite a strongly as The Searcher is as magical, in terms of igniting people’s sense of wonder. I remember going to planetarium shows as a kid, many with my dad, and being spellbound at the majesty of the universe. And what I was seeing and what I experiencing and what I was grappling with the enormity of it all and it awoke such a sense of power and passion within me. I was able to give back, to be able to honor those people that created those shows before by working on this fabulous show with the Adler is a dream come true for me and it’s a particular dream come true because my dad of course went to the University of Chicago and this was the planetarium he would go to when he was going to school and when I think of how proud he would be of me being able to carry on this tradition here at the Adler…
Katie
That’s really cool.
Nick
It’s a really cool thing, makes me just, I’m dancing on air.
Katie
I want to go back to something you mentioned early on about, basically science fiction is frequently an inspiration to people that who go into the sciences and I can’t tell you how many people out of the 100 some episodes we’ve done with our quests and almost all of them have said that they were in inspired at some point by something, be it Star Trek, Star War, countless books, but science fiction somewhere lit a fire there. What do you think is? Is it the writing, the grand majesty of the night sky? What is it that kind of lights that fire? That science fiction has that power to inspire in a way that most other disciplines don’t necessarily translate?
Nick
I think it’s ah, I think it’s a way in which science fiction can explore the big questions. My dad has a quote that I love that says that “we make our world significant but the courage of our questions and the by the depth of our answers.” and you know, there are many fabulous stories to tell in many different genres but it’s not the silly, like writing a Western, usually doesn’t get those big questions, quite the same way. Who are we? Where are we going? What’s it all about? Are we alone in the universe? These are incredibly important human questions that drive not only our sense of wonder but our sense of wonder. Religion, our sense of, trying to get a sense of why we’re here and what we’re doing and so often the truth is even stranger than the myths that we create. And yet they’re fascinating, compelling because it’s true. And science fiction has this unique opportunity to shine a light on those possibilities and awaken the, just those stirring need to understand those questions that we get from a very early age. There’s something clearly human about wanting to know what it’s all about where we come from and just what oddness of existence of consciousness in this universe. So, I think science fiction has a really valuable role to play and actually, you know, there are many different types of science fiction, hard science fiction tends to be very science-friendly. “How does a warp engine work? You know, scientifically speaking. I’ve tended to do, to this point, more social science fiction which I think also has another valuable role to play because it’s a lot of um, showing “What if?” and “Why not?” and “Where are we headed as a society?” and “What does it mean?” like, if, are we on the verge of amazing new discoveries that are going to transcend our current state to become more of a Utopian society? Or is it dystopias all the way down? And there’s a lot of possibility for us and a lot of danger and we’re at this unique moment in history where technology has gotten to the point where we can do so much, it’s on the cusp, the singularity, the technological singularity is imminent, it seems to me. Where we’ll be able to drastically enhance our own intelligence between nanotechnology and computer processors and we’ll be able to do things that that are just stretching the boundaries of our imaginations, conquer mortality itself! We can have mind uploading if we can figure out how the mind works then you could basically have a copy of your mental state living on a computer and if something happens to your body you can just download the last your into a new body which is this amazing triumph of humanity over death itself and yet we may we blow ourselves up before we can do that. So for me I feel like any opportunity I have to try to focus on the big picture stuff to get people thinking about what really matters is what’s nourishing to me as both a science fiction writer and a human being.
Katie
Do you think, and you had just used the term, I think, social? Social science fiction? That that, and writers of that genre could be the ones that kind of setting the road map?
Nick
In a sense…
Katie
So that we kind of derail?
Nick
Yah, I think of social science fiction writers as almost analogues to scouts in a primitive society. Like we’re “Let me show you were the danger is. I don’t think you want to go through these berries over here… eat the berries over here not those berries. Those berries would be bad” I grew up in Ithaca, New York where not only there was my dad but Rod Serling, Twilight Zone, and you look at things like The Monsters are Due on Maple St. and these wonderful alagories but that they speak to what it means to be a human being with our strengths and weaknesses and our foibles, and how to try to reach a fate that isn’t tragically ironic. It’s what I’m hoping we can do.
Katie
Now, as we’re kind of wrapping up our 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, there was, when you were a child recorded a very special little piece of audio and we’re going to play that right now.
*Audio recording from Nick as a child*
Hello from the children of planet Earth.
Katie
So, when you did that did you have any idea at that point in time what it would become and what it would symbolize and your role, down the line, in the future?
Nick
None whatsoever! I had a very, I like to think of it as a Johnny Quest kind of upbringing. More astronomy than spelunking but still very strange and surreal. Ya know, my dad was Carl Sagan and my mother, Linda Salzman, designed the Pioneer plaque and we would have astronomers and science fiction writers would come over to the house and there would be these dinner parties and I’d be up in my room bemoaning my bedtime and I’d pretend I had a nightmare so I could go downstairs and bother the quests. And so my parents plopping me down in front of a microphone and saying, “Okay, Nick… if you had anything to say to potential extraterrestrials out there, what would it be?” That’s, you know, surreal, but it wasn’t at the time. I mean it seemed a very normal thing. So they set me down and I thought for a little bit and I said, “Hello from the children of planet Earth” uh, because I was very, I believed in kids rights and that kids need o be represented when I was like seven. It was very important. And they were very nice, they needed and English speaker and there I was speaking English incredibly well at the time. But I didn’t realize at the time what it would mean and now I look back at it as this fantastic honor and it’s incredibly humbling and I feel so lucky and fortunate and it’s also very bizarre at the same time because here’s this piece of me, this recording of my voice that is now the most distant, human-made object in the universe and everyday it goes farther and farther away.
Katie
And it’s very representative of the purest of humanity and you’re the voice of it! And that, in itself, is the thing of goose bumps. It’s just, it’s just kinda cool!
Nick
It gives me chills. It’s weird though cause it’s this part of me, it’s like seven year old me is out in space! And the thing about Voyager is that it’ll just keep going and going and it maybe it’ll be intercepted by extraterrestrials and maybe it’ll never mean anything. There could be nothing out there but it’ll go on long after I’m gone, long after everyone is gone, long after perhaps the planet itself is gone and the Sun burns out, it’ll be just hurling through the blackness of space.
Katie
Wow! On that note, I want to thank you for sitting down with us for the 365 and I would also to thanks the listeners of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. If you want to check out longer, fuller, more robust episodes, go to www.adlerplanetarium.org/podcasts.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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