As I said above, I’m pretty sure this is “The Doomsday Device” by John Gribbin (see discussion here) http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/3c08df337ddede8a/2471f2d06d738c7c?lnk=gst&q=“Doomsday”+gribbin#2471f2d06d738c7c
The one about the power plant that might destroy the universe is probably “Vacuum States” by Geof Landis.
MAD SCIENTIST’S DAD: You don’t conduct experiments on people! You should be sure of the results first!
CROW T. ROBOT: …Then they wouldn’t be experiments!
–MST3K (Experiment 513: “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”)
Frankenstein wasn’t really an experiment with unexpected results; it worked exactly as planned. Victor wanted to create a form of life physically and mentally superior to humanity, and he did. Everything only went to hell because he panicked and abandoned it.
Seems like very few classic “sci-fi” novels from the 19th century dealt with the unforseen consequences of technology. By and large, Verne’s and Wells’ characters set out to invent something, and they did, and it worked reliably as designed. The Time Traveler didn’t just stumble on the secret of time travel by accident in the lab one day; he set out to invent a time machine. He even built a proper little patent model for demonstration purposes.
Even the Invisible Man’s formula worked exactly as planned; the only problem was that the dork didn’t think ahead to invent an antidote first. Wells probably didn’t even consider that his audience would accept the premise used in so many crappy latter-day adaptations: the secret of invisibility is discovered by accident, through experimentation on some other effect. No, dammit; it only makes sense that if someone is going to discover invisibility, it’s because they set out to invent an invisibility formula. Hell, even Dr. Jekyll was intentionally seeking a means to distill good from evil; he didn’t set out to invent a teleporter or something like that.
I’m sure there are numerous counterexamples during the Golden Age of sci-fi, but I expect the atom bomb was probably the catalyst which most encouraged the premise of “experiments with unforseen results” – perhaps ironically, since the bomb also worked exactly as planned.
Aquabats sing Cat with Two Heads. YOUTUBE LINK
I can’t remember the author nor the title, but in a short story set during the cold war, a mind-projecting device has been conceived in the USA. Statisticians are hired to determine the psyche of the quintessential American : his value, worldview, etc… The idea is, using satellites, to use the device all over the Soviet territory, to implant in the mind of all Russians citizens this American psyche and so doing put an end to the cold war.
On the day the mind attack is planned to take place, all comrade-scientists first gather to elect in an unanimous vote the secretary of the laboratory’s scientific workers committee.
No idea, but there was a similar idea in an Arthur C Clarke book, The Light of other Days.
This time the fundamental laws of physics meant that you could look back in time as well as anywhere else in the present day. This leads to the same lack of privacy worldwide, people wander in the nude or wearing special cloaks that completely conceal their identity. While doing so, they’re also able to view events such as Jesus’ death on the cross.
This sounds something like Poul Anderson’s “I Tell You, It’s True”
Out of this World comes to mind. Very innovative game for its time, it’s a shame that genre died out.
Edit: I even managed to find the intro sequence online. Apparently they do have everything on Youtube:
I found that book extraordinarily compelling, even if the concept was a bit silly.
Me too, and I didn’t really like much of his later novels either.
But not invariably. as I pointed out in my Teemings piece “Teleportation Angst” (now no longer online. Sniff!), the very first teleportation story (from 1877) had the teleporter fail partway through, with results evident from the title – The Man Without a Body. The story’s by the underappreciated Edwatrd Page Mitchell:
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu5aYEIJJ_HIBTCpXNyoA?p=“The+Man+Without+a+Body”+Edward+Page+Mitchell&fr=yfp-t-501
In fact, the second teleportation story also has the teleporter screwing up, resulting in Bad Things for the cat who was the subject. Sadly, teleportation devices kept having bad things happen throughout the years. George Langelaan’s “The Fly”, published in Playboy in the 1950s (and which I’ll bet most people think originated the concept) was actually a Johnny-come-very-lately to the idea, some 80 years after it was first used.
But they kept on doing it. Star Trek, from the original series on, kept having Bad Things happening with its teleporters – they were as bad as its Holodeck. The very first Star Trek movie killed off two characters in the teleporter.
And don’t forget the many sequels to The Fly and its remake. And The Duplicated Man. And Galaxy Quest. And Timeline (where, again, a cat gets it. Just like in Langelaan’s original story – what do teleporter writers have against cats, anyway?)
This is all pretty disturbing – anxiety about a non-existent technology. It’s as if most stories about spacefilgyht resulted in crashes. Or if any faster-than-light technology had an 80% or better chance of failure.
There’s no shortage of examples in film or TV about Scientific Experiments Gone Wrong. Or in the print of some writers (I’m lookin’ at YOU, Michael Crichton. Being dead won’t save you.). science fiction literature, on the other hand, has generally been more positive, and freaky experiments tend to have more convivial results.
Devilishly clever title, eh?
Oddly enough, the movie Mimic, an early Guillermo Del Toro effort, treats the unintended consequences of a scientific project - and the way science itself proceeds - reasonably seriously for a B horror movie. The premise is that a devastating pandemic is being transmitted by cockroaches, and in response the scientist-hero devises a genetic plague to sterilise and thus wipe out the cockroaches. Initial success, as the disease vector is halted and the pandemic stopped, followed by Unforseen Consequences in the form of six foot cockroaches, which had survived the genetic holocaust and mutated, lurking in the subways - that’s the B horror part.
It’s never presented as Scientists Daring To Tamper With the Unknown or Trespassing In God’s Realm, though. If you overlook the implausibility of the uintended consequences, man-sized cockroaches eating unwary commuters, there was an immediate problem, a sensible solution was devised and implemented, but its initial success was followed by an unforeseen practical complication: somewhat akin to the development of DDT to wipe out malarial mosquitoes. Unlike most entries in the genre, science itself is not seen as hubristic or misguided.
Indeed, it’s the best title since Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop about people who don’t know they are on a generation starship was renamed Starship by the American publishers.
Interestingly enough, in the original short story this film is based on, there is no human experimentation involved at all – the human-mimicking cockroaches were a natural evolutionary development.
The anime Neon Genesis Evangelion has a catastrophic global event that’s caused by some experimentation with … something that’s found in a giant cave near the north pole (not that I’m afraid to spoil, I just can’t remember what the hell it really was). Then there’s a second (third, heh ;)), even bigger event later in the story.
Though this is kind of common in anime, I guess Tokyo gets obliterated on a weekly schedule by things that go wrong.