# Which science..................fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 20, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052 "2017-05-20T01:50:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/1 "2017-05-20T01:50:08Z")
Just rereading “The Martian” and it occurs to me that, aside from all the info about Mars and celestial mechanics, there’s a great deal about _botany._ I’m wondering if dopers would give the name of a SF story (novel, movie, short, whatever) and indicate what particular science, aside from the usual suspects, figures prominently in it. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/2 "2017-05-20T01:56:20Z")
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is Robotics Fiction. And so is most of Asimov, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/3 "2017-05-20T01:58:34Z")
Stochastic Man, by Silverberg, is about statistical probability analysis. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/4 "2017-05-20T02:01:05Z")
Oh, and James White’s Sector General stories/novels are all about medicine. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/5 "2017-05-20T02:46:45Z")
**Blindsight** has a great deal to do with neurology, and specifically what the difference is between intelligence and sentience. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/6 "2017-05-20T05:31:41Z")
It’s fantasy, not scifi, but underlying pretty much everything in Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series (and its offshoots) are archaeology and anthropology, which just happen to be Erikson’s day job. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/7 "2017-05-20T06:10:09Z")
[“The Ugly Chickens”](http://www.drabblecast.org/2014/01/16/drabblecast-310-ugly-chickens/) by Howard Waldrop is probably the only science fiction story where the science is ornithology. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/8 "2017-05-20T11:45:20Z")
_Tau Zero_ by Poul Anderson is about relativity. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/9 "2017-05-20T11:54:56Z")
Robert J Sawyer’s [WWW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWW_Trilogy) trilogy (_Wake, Watch, Wonder_) covers the interweb and AI pretty well. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/10 "2017-05-20T13:37:21Z")
There are a few (such as _Babel-17_ by Samuel Delany, _Embassytown_ by China Mieville,_Native Tounge_ by Suzette Haden Elgin, and _Stories of Your Life_ by Ted Chiang[) [URL=“http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/33918.China\_Mi\_ville”]](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8540.Suzette_Haden_Elgin) that center around linguistics ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/11 "2017-05-20T14:30:35Z")
For that matter, linguistics is also the most rigorous science in Lewis’s _Out of the Silent Planet_, the first book in his Space Trilogy. All of the physics etc. is at an indistinguishable-from-magic level, but the main character is a linguist, and it does actually give some detail on his process of learning the aliens’ language. On a related note, the plot of _Girl Genius_ a while back involved a prison for mad scientists. Most of them were the sort who made the predictable giant robots and death rays, or maybe Frankensteinian biological constructs, but one of the characters in the prison was a mad sociologist. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/12 "2017-05-20T14:37:04Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Just rereading “The Martian” and it occurs to me that, aside from all the info about Mars and celestial mechanics, there’s a great deal about _botany._ Would [agronomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agronomy) be a better match? > [@](#): > > I’m wondering if dopers would give the name of a SF story (novel, movie, short, whatever) and indicate what particular science, aside from the usual suspects, figures prominently in it. Stretching the bounds of “science” a bit, Rudy Rucker’s _[White Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Light_(novel))_ is about the mathematics of infinity. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/13 "2017-05-20T15:25:33Z")
Heinlein’s “Tunnel in the Sky” has some nice bits on political science, such as defining a “lack of confidence motion.” For a lot of us, this was our first introduction to some of these ideas. There are also some poli-sci ideas in “Starship Troopers.” (And a few more in “Job: A Comedy of Justice.” Also some economics.) ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/14 "2017-05-20T15:58:18Z")
Prostho Plus, from 1971, by Piers Anthony, is a humorous novel with a dentist for the main protagonist, and the misadventures he goes through doing dental work around the galaxy. ---
**Author:** ![Orr\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ee59a6/32.png) [@Orr\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orr_G)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/15 "2017-05-20T16:08:04Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > There are a few (such as _Babel-17_ by Samuel Delany, _Embassytown_ by China Mieville,_Native Tounge_ by Suzette Haden Elgin, and _Stories of Your Life_ by Ted Chiang[) [URL=“http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/33918.China\_Mi\_ville”]](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8540.Suzette_Haden_Elgin) that center around linguistics Speaking of Chiang, I just read his collected stories in _Stories of Your Life_, and noted that he had stories that fell into interesting scientifiction subgenres such as Old Testamtent Fiction, Kabbalah fiction, and Mathematics fiction as well. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/16 "2017-05-20T16:39:13Z")
“The Andromeda Strain,” (the novel) was heavily into (of course) microbiology.The part where one of the scientists is exposed to Andromeda and requests the injection of the serum that wipes out all antibodies in your system–and then you might die from diseases we “outgrew” thousands of years ago–kept me up nights as a teen. Plus, how _would_ you incinerate a hovering helicopter so’s not to spread a disease? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/17 "2017-05-20T17:27:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > [“The Ugly Chickens”](http://www.drabblecast.org/2014/01/16/drabblecast-310-ugly-chickens/) by Howard Waldrop is probably the only science fiction story where the science is ornithology. I’ve never thought of that as an sf story. Good one, though. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Burden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Jack\_Burden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Burden)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2017, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/18 "2017-05-22T00:26:50Z")
**SevenEves** taught me more about orbital mechanics than I ever wanted to or will need to know. Also a lot about development of robotics and their potential applications. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2017, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/19 "2017-05-22T01:31:47Z")
> [@Jack\_Burden](#): > > **SevenEves** taught me more about orbital mechanics than I ever wanted to or will need to know. Also a lot about development of robotics and their potential applications. Seveneves taught me that Neil Stephenson could randomly pound on his keyboard for a few hours and someone would publish it. ---
**Author:** ![Moris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moris/32/2846_2.png) [@Moris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moris)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2017, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052/20 "2017-05-22T04:11:59Z")
Asimov’s Robots of Dawn is more about politics than robotics. My favourite of the series. Most of Lem’s works are brilliant philosophical observations about communicology and the science of evolution. Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz is about religion. Theology, if you want. Dish’s Camp Concentration is about alchemy (not really, but it’s really prominent motive) Clarke’s Dolphin Island: communication with animals, oceanography. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-science-fiction/787052.md?page=2)