The history of science is filled with beautiful hypotheses slain by ugly facts. The tendency of the universe to disregard the professional needs of hard-working scientists is something about which little can be done1. In fact, disproof is a vital and necessary element for scientific progress, no matter how vexing it must have been to Thomas Gold2. However, in that interval between hypothesis and disproof, a sufficiently enticing model can inspire intriguing science fiction stories.
Don’t believe me? Here are five science fiction works based on since-discredited science.
Polywater
Russian scientists suggested that under certain conditions, water could be polymerized. Subsequent experimentation revealed that under certain conditions, water could be contaminated, and the results wildly misinterpreted by Russian scientists.
In the context of the Cold War, the possibility that Russia had access to a novel form of water was sufficient to spark fears about a “polywater gap.” This may have helped inspire Wilson Tucker’s decision to incorporate polywater as a key component to the time machine that plays a central role in Tucker’s The Year of the Quiet Sun(1970), in which a politically, militarily, and racially torn America attempts to secure its destiny by dispatching time travelers to map out the near future. Can America be saved with foreknowledge of its unalterable timeline? The answer not only won a Campbell Memorial Award, but the book also won the award in a year other than that in which The Year of the Quiet Sun was published. Time travel!
Memory RNA
James V. McConnell and others believed they had evidence suggesting that memories could be transferred via RNA from one planarian to another. Attempts to reproduce McConnell’s results failed and the model fell out of favor, as models without support do.
Chemically-transferred memory is a wonderful plot enabler. Thus, it was no surprise to see memory RNA appear over and over. Take for example, Larry Niven’s A World Out of Time (1976), in which the memories of a dead 20th-century American, Jerome Branch Corbell, are transferred into the body of a condemned man. The state that rules the Earth of tomorrow requires a specific mindset for its interstellar starships, which the late Corbell appeared to possess. The state’s assessment is incorrect, as the state realizes once Corbell hijacks his spacecraft for a tour of the distant future.
In fact, A World Out of Time features a number of intriguing but wrong ideas, one of which is…
Bussard Ramjets
Physicist Robert W. Bussard’s 1960 proposal transformed major challenge to relativistic star flight into an asset. He theorized that the thin interstellar medium of hydrogen through which starships would plow could be used as fuel. One could use magnetic fields to divert the hydrogen into a fusion rocket and thus obtain endless fuel and reaction mass. Star farers would not have to worry about being bombarded with relativistic particles and at one gravity forever, the whole galaxy was within reach3!
Too bad that the math does not work and Bussard ramjets, if built, could work far better as brakes than as propulsion systems.
Bussard ramjets were wonderful plot enablers for relativity-curious SF authors, so it was no surprise that ramjets showed up in numerous SF works. Take for example, Lee Killough’s SF procedural The Doppelgänger Gambit (1979), whose plot is kicked off when conniving Jorge Hazlett bilks would-be space colonists by selling them a subpar Bussard Ramjet, with lethal results. Rather than face justice for negligent homicide, Hazlett decides to kill his way to safety with premeditated murder. Of course, it is so hard to stop with just one murder, even in a panopticon state.
Quicksand Moon Dust
Prior to space probes landing on the Moon, the precise nature of the lunar surface was unknown. Among the contending models was Thomas Gold’s4 proposal that the lunar surface could be covered in a layer of fine dust. Depending on the properties and the depth, the layer might act like quicksand5. As it happens, the lunar surface is dusty, but visitors do not have to worry about sinking into it. That is the only good news. Lunar dust is actually much nastier than Gold envisioned. Abrasive lunar dust is a hazard to machines and humans alike.
Arthur C. Clark’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) embraced the most extreme case of Gold’s model. Deep dry dust seas are traversed by lunar boats conveying tourists. A mishap strands a boat deep beneath the lunar surface. Will rescuers locate and retrieve the tourists in time, or will they smother or be boiled in their own body heat6?
The Destruction of Planet V
The region between Mars and Jupiter is filled with a myriad of small bodies. That is not controversial. The Belt’s origin, however, has been the subject of various competing theories over the years. In 1972, M. W. Ovenden proposed that the Belt is the remnant of a large planet that exploded about sixteen million years ago. Subsequent evidence… did not support this model* (imagine an emoticon of extreme disappointment inserted here).
[*Note to the editors at Reactor: please use a “this is an extreme understatement” font for “did not support this model.”]
This is not a huge surprise, given that it would take a phenomenal amount of energy to disrupt a 90-Earth-mass planet7, not to mention the total lack of evidence found on Earth for such massive disruption of a nearby world8.
Despite what was even at the time overwhelming reason to be skeptical about Ovenden’s model, there was at least one Disco-era SF novel that incorporated the model in a plot-significant way. In fact, Ovenden’s hypothesis may be the least bonkers thing about Charles Sheffield’s Sight of Proteus (1978), in which advanced biofeedback enables form change, which amounts to shape-shifting. Exposure to fragments of the exploded world prove to have unexpected effects on form change. What these effects are will surprise and delight readers.
Just because a hypothesis may be eventually disproven does not mean it cannot be inspirational before that comes to pass. Indeed, some ideas linger in SF long after they have been discarded by the scientific community. The above is only a small sample of a large field. I may have missed some of your favorite examples. In fact, I hope I have. Please entertain us all with other suggestions in comments below.
- Trust me, you don’t want to go down the “what Lysenko says is science and true” path. ↩︎
- Trust me, this is very funny, for reasons that will become apparent… ↩︎
- In the reference frame of the traveler. ↩︎
- Yes, the same Thomas Gold as in footnote 2. Gold had a talent for being brilliantly wrong in a wide variety of fields. Sometimes he was brilliantly right. Gold correctly identified the source of Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s mysterious repeating signal as a pulsar. His success rate was high enough that even his outré suggestions could not be dismissed out of hand. The fact that there’s never been a Thomas Gold Inspirationally Incorrect Hard Science Fiction anthology is one of SF’s great injustices. ↩︎
- It is impossible to fully sink in quicksand. I do not recommend quicksand for your body disposal needs. ↩︎
- The struggle to save the tourists is reminiscent of the efforts to save the Apollo 13 crew, although, since the novel preceded the Apollo mishap, it cannot have been inspired by it. ↩︎
- Even with perfect efficiency, it would take a full week’s worth of the sun’s output to disrupt the Earth. ↩︎
- One tends to think of planets as effectively isolated from each other, aside from gravitational perturbation. This is not always the case. The formation of Mercury’s Caloris Planitia about four billion years ago may have deposited up to sixteen million billion tons of debris on Earth. ↩︎
