Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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The Limits of Limitless and other Memes
March 4th, 2011
Like me, you may have seen the commercials or trailers for the new movie Limitless coming out in a couple of weeks:
It looks like a cool movie. I’ve always loved science fiction about increasing intelligence (e.g., the excellent “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes made into the pretty good movie Charley).
However, like me, you may have also noticed the tagline, “You know how they say we can only access twenty percent of our brains? Well this lets you access all of it.”
Hmmm…sounds like a variation of the ten-percent myth, that we only use ten percent of our brains. The myth is flexible enough that 20% is equally plausible — and also wrong. I’m sure that when I was younger I was guilty of believing and repeating this myth, but it is only a myth. I don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining why and repeating the linked Snopes article above, rather I want to spend a few moments thinking about this myth and its relationship to science fiction.
Now, first I wonder how many of these myths exist and are widely believed and repeated. Probably counting Snopes articles is a good way to start, although that’s surely incomplete and wouldn’t include numerous superstitions, commonly misunderstood/mispronounced words, let alone many misconceptions I see regularly teaching science. I mean, honest, unbiased, and well-informed folks at the Free Republic dismiss Snopes for its “left-leaning bias.” Reminds me of a Stephen Colbert quote (google Colbert and the bias of reality if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
Once you know that the premise of a story is built around a myth — not a fairy tale or a story of Greek gods, but a widely believed falsehood — it’s hard, for me at least, to establish the suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy a story. I keep thinking, “the writers are poorly informed, not careful, and this story is going to have more mistakes.” Then I start actively looking for them instead of losing myself in the story. How about you?
This is a huge killer in science fiction in particular for me. Sometimes I see a flaw in a plan or the world, and sometimes it’s just a mistake. Sometimes the writers actually have it figured out, and exploit what is an apparent flaw in their character’s knowledge or planning to good effect, but I’ve been uncertain whether or not to trust the reality of the story world. Does the character’s plan have a flaw, or does the writer’s? For instance, some characters, smart and well trained, granted, but not significantly more so than myself, make plans involving the use or abuse of alien technology with only a few minutes of fiddling about with it.
Ultimately, even though the line makes me suspect that the creators of the movie Limitless don’t care enough to get their details right, I’ll go see it if the reviews are good and plan to turn off my critical thinking early. Maybe 80% of it. I’ll only need 20% of my brain to follow this storyline I’m sure!
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It’s such a fun premise that I’m looking forward to this one despite the fact that Hollywood seems to be almost entirely scientifically illiterate. Just keeping my expectations low (especially given the use of a myth 3 minutes of research would have shown to be false).
And speaking of the uber-brain as a premise I recently discovered HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It’s currently number 1 on my list of favorite works of fantasy fiction. I liked the original novels but this is so much better (and addresses most of the things that bugged me about the novels). A Harry who’s a child math/science prodigy who wants to apply the methods of science, rationality and critical thinking to the world of magic. The chapter on his first encounter with Professor Snape made me want to cheer.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
I think you’d probably love it. I just wish I can actually buy it in book form.
I have to say, that tag line is enough to make me not want to watch the movie. As you say, when the whole premise is wrong, how can you trust the story enough to engage with it?
The best rebuttal I’ve heard about the 10/20% of myth is, ‘well, let’s see how well you’d function if we removed 90% of your brain.’