Long time fans of the FQxI podcast may recall an interview and reading by author Liam Hogan, who shared his award-winning quantum horror story, "Ana" with us. Hogan recently published a collection of science fiction short stories, A Short History of the Future, and has a written a short post for FQxI about how his background in physics informs his fiction.
***
From Liam Hogan:
A Short History of the Future contains 42 science fictional short stories with unabashed retro themes. That’s time-travel, spaceships, aliens, teleportation, and robots, among others. This is no surprise, as I must admit I’m fairly retro myself, and besides, the present has yet to catch up with most of the science fiction of my childhood, the paperback Asimovs and Arthur C. Clarkes, Silverbergs and Heinleins. I studied physics thirty-five years ago, and I learned little if anything that wasn’t known thirty-five years earlier again. You don’t, when you do a physics degree, even at Oxford. That’s what doctorates are for.
While I’ve maintained a keen interest in science, and always will, the stories in this collection were written primarily to entertain, (and to exorcise ideas rattling around my skull), not to educate. Which is why there’s science-fantasy in there, even some science-whimsy. (A device that lifts kisses from love letters?)
So what might appeal to those with foundational physics interests? Well, my award-winning story, "Ana" (Quantum Shorts 2016), kicks things off, and tackles the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, with multiverses being hived off with each observation, in this case, whenever a six and three-quarter years old girl looks under her bed at night to see if there are monsters. "The What-The Tree" imagines what lifeforms might surround a black hole, and alien life, or the lack of it, gets a detailed exploration via the Drake equation in "Galena" (previously published in Analog, and Best of British Science Fiction).
"Cards Against Cosmology" has two deities dividing the universe into what is known, and what is unknown, knowable, and unknowable. It’s a more even contest than you might imagine. "Institute Library Technical Paper RN2399/2037" (LA SciFest Roswell Award runner up) takes a bleak look at what might happen if you can somehow communicate between realities, and "Compatibility" does the same, but on the cosier side of the cosy-to-grim spectrum.
Anyone who feels sorry/not-sorry for Schrödinger’s cat, should perhaps read "Schrödinger’s Escape Route." It won’t take long, but longer than the shortest story in the collection, "Star Little, Twinkle, Twinkle," which poses a question about the arrow of time. The difficulties of orbital mechanics rears its head in "Last Bite at the Klondike." One possible solution is suggested in "Cut and Thrust," another in "Merry-Go-Round."
Where I do break the laws of physics (those pesky time-travel stories!), I find myself focused on the problems of that trope: of navigation, in "Fixed Point" (the Earth, the solar system, and the galaxy are all moving through space and time), and the consequences of knowing the outcome, in "Repeat Performance. Though sometimes I just throw in an Alice-in-Wonderland court case against our intrepid time-traveller, as in "Time Trial."
Other stories touch on transhumanism, such as "Superman," and "The Uploaded." Then there are space pirates and dinosaurs and 3D bio-printers and why Pluto is missing from the astro charts (and why that is bad news), and a whole host of other tales.
With 42 stories to dip into, there’s something for everyone, whatever their level of physics, from the science-curious to those at the leading edge of today’s science–the ones graduates will be learning about, in thirty-five years time.
***
You can get a taster of Liam Hogan's storytelling on this classic edition of the FQxI Podcast, and buy A Short History of the Future (Northodox Press) here. And if you still want more, you can help FQxI by purchasing a copy of Hogan's first collection, Happy Ending Not Guaranteed through the FQxI Bookstore. (FQxI will receive a small donation if purchased through this link.)