Hello there,
If you're reading this, it means that you probably have an interest in science-fiction, or science, or both. I have an interest in both, and that's why when it came to picking a dissertation topic for my Masters (Science Communication in DCU), this seemed like the perfect thing.
But what is this "this" I refer to? This "this" that I refer to (to coin an unwieldy phrase), is my dissertation, entitled "Probable Impossibilites: Using Science Fiction to Communicate Science".
Science Fiction has a pretty bad reputation when it comes to science. Some scientists consider it to be "just that Buck Rogers stuff", and that the genre is more of a hinderance than a help to a public understanding of science. But I disagree, as my interest in science and science fiction are closely related. And surely if I could hold both of these interests in my head at the same time, then they mustn't be mutually exclusive. In fact, in my experience these two interests have reinforced each other. So, being (by dint of training and inclination) a scientifically minded individual, I have tried to show in my thesis that Science Fiction can help with this goal of science education. Of course, this is only a tiny addition to a huge body of academic work done by researchers far more skilled than little 'ol me (and you can read all about them in the likes of Science Fiction Studies, and Foundation, two journals without which my thesis would have been impossible). But it is, I hope, an original contribution, and I'm immensely proud of it.
Lots of my research was done at P-con, an Irish Science Fiction convention, and when I was doing it I got a lot of requests from people to let them know what the results were. In fact, I got noises of interest from all over Sci-Fi fandom. So this is why this page is here: to let people know how it went. Below this bit, I've done a short summary of the study and it's results, but you'll find at the top of this page a link to a pdf of the full thesis and appendices. The summary covers the basics of what I did at the two conventions along with the results, but the full thing (at a mere 12,994 words) also describes and (hopefully sensibly) links together a whole bunch of papers from both journals I mentioned above (this is called the "literature review" in the parlance). I also go into more detail about the study. I tried to use both the lit review and study together to make my arguments, so if you're interested in science fiction more generally I'd recommend giving the full thing a look.
But I would say that, wouldn't I?
There is a strong possibility that you're an attendee of either P-con, or Left Coast Crime (a sometimes British, sometimes American Crime Fiction convention, who also allowed me to do research on them). If so, I want to thank you personally for helping me achieve a good mark on my Masters. You were great. And you look wonderful today, by the way.
Brian Macken, MSc
P.S. If you want to let me know what you thought of anything in my thesis, either the topic or it's implementation, I'd be delighted to hear from you - so feel free to leave a comment on my blog here.
P.P.S If you are interested to read the thesis, what I would recommend is not reading the chapters about the study (Chapters 3 and 4) (Don't get put off by the fact there's chapters - they're only little, really). Read the summary of them instead, because in the full thesis I have to go into torturous detail about exactly what everyone said, and list everything, and the summary skims over all that. I mean, if you want to read those chapters, go ahead, but don't expect them to be beacons of readability.
The first questions asked to what level and subject the attendee was educated and what subject area they work in. The idea was that if the person was interested in science, they would be more likely to pursue to it as a career (this is, of course, not necessarily true. But it would provide a potential indicator).
If a person is interested in science, they will more than likely seek it out in the media. So I asked about the different ways they digest "popular" science - TV, radio, magazines, books and the internet.
In September of 2005, the BA festival of science took place in Dublin, and so respondants were asked if they attended any of the events. Since attendance depends on the person's availability, as well as their interest, they were also asked if they would attend a similar event, and if not, why not.
Sorry this bit is so dry, but it is necessary. Honest.
I also asked them how important science is in the science fiction they read (and I'm using "read" in the semiotic way here, so that includes watching TV, listening to radio etc etc) - "Very important", "Nice, but not essential" or "Not important".
They were also asked if they would read "science-fact" articles in a science fiction magazine.
Finally, they were asked about a question which is currently splitting the science fiction community in half. This question had nothing whatsoever to do with my thesis, but I felt that if I could use this questionnaire to heal this great divide, then it was my responsibility to do so. The question was: Do you use "Sci-fi", or "SF" as a contraction? The keen eyed amongst you will notice that this question isn't in the appendices above - but that's because these appendices are the ones I handed up for marking, and that's the sort of thing that would puzzle an examiner. And a puzzled examiner is an unhappy one. So I thought it best to leave it out.
In order for these results to mean anything, I needed something to compare it with. It's no good learning that a certain percentage of sci-fi heads like science if I don't know if that's more or less than average. The solution to this problem rode in on a steed called the Left Coast Crime Convention (contracted as LCC from now on) (speaking of which, some of you will have noticed that I used the "Sci-fi" contraction. I like the noise of cricket bats making love) (that is an obscure reference to something, I'm not actually weird) (well, not that weird). LCC is a crime fiction convention which took place on the 16th to the 19th of March, 2006 and they agreed to help me by being my benchmark. They were sent a similar questionnaire (Appendix B, downloadable above), which was available at their registration desk.The LCC questionnaire was more-or-less identical - refrences to science fiction were changed to crime fiction, and the BA science festival question was changed to be about British Science Week, which had occurred the previous week.
So then. Results.
First of all, education. Ooh, tables.
You can read about how I coded each answer into these categories in the full thesis. The table above lists percentages. The p-con respondants have a far higher proportion of science graduates, and the LCC respondants have more humanities graduates. So far, so good.
Next, Occupation
The table above shows what percentage of both LCC and P-con respondants listed as their occupation. Again, it's fairly obvious that there is a higher incidence of science amongst the sci-fi group, with a corresponding majority of humanities in the crime fiction group (is there a contraction for crime fiction? Cri-fi? Although that sounds like it could be a further contraction for chick-lit).
Above are the percentages for the science-media related questions. Mostly, P-con attendees read (again, meant semiotically) more science. Except, however, for radio where LCC attendees read far more. This could be because the BBC run far more science programming than any Irish radio station, but I'm not sure. That answer's a puzzle. And the TV percentages are more-or-less the same, but that could be because television is so generally popular, or it could be because there is an awful lot of crime documentaries which would be classed as science documentaries - and crime fiction fans would be inclined to watch that kind of programming. Not many people in the P-con or LCC camps were particulary interested in going to science festivals, however. But, overall I'd say sci-fi read more science in the media too.
Finally, how important science is in what they read:
Now these answers aren't that far seperated from each other, but LCC does have a higher percentage of people saying that the science was very important. "Oh dear", you think, "this kind of contradicts Brian's arguments doesn't it? I mean, shouldn't the sci-fi group find science more important?". "But, aha", I say, "this actually fits in nicely with my argument". "Poor, poor Brian", you think to yourself, since you're too polite to say it out loud, "he's completley lost it". "I have not", I say, since this is a first-person narrative so I can do mind reading tricks like that, "allow me to explain".
The basic premise of my argument is that science fiction can be useful in communicating science. The fact that science fiction fans are split almost 50-50 as to how important science is shows just how useful sci-fi can be - because communicating science is more than just showing the mechanisms of nature, it's showing the potential effects and challenges which science presents. And in order to do that, sometimes you need to fudge the exact details - you need to allow faster-than-light travel so that they can fly to another planet and show us humanity as seen through an alien's eyes; break conservation of momentum to show the potential social effects of nanotechnology; to ask about the ethical boudaries of scientific knowledge by allowing dead flesh to be stitched together and reborn with a lightning strike. This is why science fiction is useful, because it can be used both to teach scientific principles (ie, hard sci-fi) and the potential effects on us as human beings living in society.
So in that last table, it's not the comparison with LCC that is important to my argument, so much as the 50-50 split in the P-con answers. The LCC percentage makes sense, since in a crime novel proper forensic details are important to trying to work out the crime.
So there you have it. I hope you find these results interesting, and thanks for being interested enough to read down this far. Again, I make a far larger argument in the full thesis, so feel free to read it. And do let me know what you think about anything you've read about here at the aul blog.
....
hmmm?
Oh yeah, the Sci-fi/SF question
Ahem, well, I mean, it probably doesn't matter. Shouldn't we be focusing on what we have in common, rather than -
...allright, allright. The winner was.. SF
Fine, it was SF, allright? I backed the wrong one. I still think Sci-fi sounds better. Cricket bats are people too, y'know.