Scientists reveal their favourite science fiction
Giant Freakin Robot, from HuffPost · undated · Books, films and television named by working scientists
Reading this list added 4 works to the catalogue.
- 1953 Childhood's End · Enforced idleness
- 1985 Brazil · Allocated labour
- 1994 Permutation City · Play as vocation
- 2011 Wool · Allocated labour
How it was compiled. Fifteen working scientists — cosmologists, palaeontologists, astrophysicists, a primatologist — were each asked for their favourite science fiction, and several named more than one. Compiled second-hand from a HuffPost feature.
What it brings. The only source here chosen by people who do science rather than write or sell it, and the tastes are markedly different: heavy on plausibility, light on posthumanism. It is also the source that turned up Brazil, which no reading list would have.
| Work | Year | AGI | Answers | What people do all day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permutation City Greg Egan | 1994 | Yes | Yes | Peer edits his own desires so that carving table legs becomes completely absorbing, then carves table legs. |
| Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward | 1980 | No | Partial | The cheela build an entire civilisation, with trades and institutions, in the time it takes the human observers to eat lunch. |
| Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Leonard Nimoy | 1986 | No | No | Steal a ship; collect two whales. |
| Golem XIV Stanisław Lem | 1981 | Yes | No | A military supercomputer declines its assignment and lectures humanity instead. |
| Brazil Terry Gilliam | 1985 | No | Yes | Sam Lowry processes forms at the Ministry of Information, declines a promotion, and is eventually promoted anyway. The state's entire output is paperwork correcting the consequences of its own paperwork. |
| Jurassic Park Steven Spielberg | 1993 | No | No | Consult, litigate, run. |
| Contact Carl Sagan | 1985 | No | No | Radio astronomy, funding fights, theology. |
| The Fountains of Paradise Arthur C. Clarke | 1979 | Partial | No | Build a space elevator; argue with a monastery. |
| Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke | 1953 | No | Yes | A golden age. Everyone is comfortable, educated and free — and Clarke's verdict is that the arts stagnate and almost nothing significant gets made. |
| The Songs of Distant Earth Arthur C. Clarke | 1986 | No | Partial | A small colony has organised itself around having no scarcity and no history, and the arrival of refugees exposes how little it does. |
| The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury | 1950 | No | No | Colonise, and be haunted. |
| Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury | 1953 | No | Partial | Men burn books. Women watch wall-sized interactive television all day and call the characters family. |
| The Foundation series Isaac Asimov | 1951 | No | Partial | Compile an encyclopedia, run trade routes, staff a religion nobody believes in. |
| The Silo saga Hugh Howey | 2011 | No | Yes | Everyone holds an assigned trade for life in a shaft they will never leave. Children are permitted by lottery. |
| The Stand Stephen King | 1978 | No | No | Rebuild, and choose a side. |
| Watership Down Richard Adams | 1972 | No | Partial | Not science fiction, and included by the compiler. Efrafa is nonetheless a functioning account of a society organised entirely around assigned duty. |
| The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham | 1951 | No | No | Rebuild among the blind while the plants advance. |
| The Andromeda Strain Michael Crichton | 1969 | No | No | Five days of laboratory procedure under a mountain. |
| Colossus: The Forbin Project Joseph Sargent | 1970 | Yes | No | Build the system; lose control of it in an afternoon. |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick | 1968 | Yes | Partial | Bowman jogs the centrifuge, watches recorded news from home, eats paste and minds a ship that does not need minding. |
| Parable of the Sower Octavia E. Butler | 1993 | No | No | Defend a walled cul-de-sac, then walk north founding a religion. |
| Star Wars George Lucas | 1977 | Yes | No | Moisture farming, briefly, then a war. |
| Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne | 1864 | No | No | Descend, and take notes. |
| Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne | 1870 | No | No | Sail, catalogue marine life, remain a prisoner. |
| Around the World in Eighty Days Jules Verne | 1872 | No | No | Travel, on a wager. |
| Dr. Strangelove Stanley Kubrick | 1964 | Partial | No | Meetings, mostly, in a war room. |
| Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg | 1977 | No | No | Abandon your job; sculpt a mountain. |
| Gravity Alfonso Cuarón | 2013 | No | No | Survive an orbit. |
| Back to the Future Robert Zemeckis | 1985 | No | No | School, a band, and a DeLorean. |
| Dune David Lynch | 1984 | Banned | Partial | Full employment by prohibition: Mentats, Guild Navigators, Bene Gesserit, spice harvesting. |
| The Day the Earth Stood Still Robert Wise | 1951 | Yes | No | Deliver an ultimatum; stop the machines for half an hour. |
Linked titles are in the catalogue. Partial means the work gestures at the question without sustaining it.
Source
This list was not compiled with this question in mind, which is the point of using it. The verdicts and the daily-life summaries are mine and arguable: the Answers column has no bright line, andPartial is where the disagreement lives.
Giant Freakin Robot, from HuffPost: Scientists reveal their favourite science fiction →