Bad science-fiction

By Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, September 30, 2009

Last week I commented that good science fiction combines genuine science and imagination, and obtains stimulant stories that reveal something about human nature or about current or future societies.

On the contrary, bad science fiction constructs fantasies that "sound" scientific but are not based in legitimate scientific knowledge, and many times openly contradict it. It usually presents amazing technology, some of it real (laser beams, computers, robots) and some less plausible or plainly impossible (force fields, time machines) to sustain the drama which is actually just adventures. It's simply fantasy with a science flavour. Movies such as Star Wars and a lot of what is transmitted in TV as "science fiction" are clear examples.

But still, bad science fiction is an honest entertainment. The problem is that there are also mixtures of science and fiction which are dishonest: think of the innumerable quacks and charlatan scams that claim to have discovered new scientific principles and to possess the "secrets" to cure any disease.

Let's take a popular example. What if there was a machine capable of healing us just by being connected to it?

An American guy that calls himself "professor" William Nelson, and affirms to have worked in the Apollo project for NASA, moved to Budapest and started manufacturing a machine that "restores the bio-energetic balance of the body".

He calls it SCIO, for Scientific Consciousness Interface Operation (also known as EPFX, QXCI or Quantum Xrroid Interface System; all these name don't have any meaning whatsoever, of course).

Nelson looks just like what he actually is: a full blown charlatan, a fraud. But he is a great seller and his machine is popular in a lot of countries, including Mexico. The number of quacks that offer "treatments" with this almost-magical machine is rising, as well as the number of their customers, which are really only victims of their own wishful thinking and of the ignorance or malevolence of the so called "therapists". The scam is also dangerous, because it claims to substitute legitimate medical treatments.

Good science fiction is not about impossible things, but, precisely, about the things science considers possible, and starting from there, it constructs fantasies. In contrast, the SCIO machine, whose ale in the USA, by the way, is prohibited under charges of fraud, is bad science and bad fiction: a lie and a disrespect to the intelligence and good faith of people in pain.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Good science-fiction

By Martí­n Bonfil Olivera

Published in Milenio Diario, September 23, 2009

I'm a fan of good science-fiction: the one that, as the name implies, joins science with fiction to see what this union produces.

In good science-fiction, fiction starts from authentic scientific knowledge and extends it through imagination to obtain stimulating and even revealing stories. (Less frequently, science obtains from fiction the inspiration to make explorations that show new worlds, or new possibilities).

I'm not a deep connoisseur, but I greatly enjoy the classics, such as Isaac Asimov. I have just delighted re-reading his excellent book of short stories, The martian way (1955).

And I know even less about Mexican science fiction. But I have just finished a stupendous book, Gel azul (Blue gel, Suma de letras, 2009), a pair of short stories from my friend Bernardo Fernández, known as Bef, one of the best contemporaneous Mexican cartoonists (or moneros, as he would put it).

The already famous Bef has built himself a second reputation as a novelist, wining prizes in Mexico and Spain. His detective-style novel Tiempo de alacranes (Joaquín Mortiz, 2005) won one in the Semana Negra de Guijón (Black Week at Guijón, Spain), and Gel azul won the Ignotus prize. It deserved it.

The point is that Bef is a great story-teller: intelligent, precise, efficient, charming, sensitive. In his novels, his obsessions are recurrent: the filthy, violent, unsuccessful, fallen-on-hard-times detective who, deep inside, is very likeable; the cute girl, unreachable and bitchy; the mystery to be solved; the fight against mafia, be it dealers or organ-stealers from those who dream a blue-tinted virtual dream while connected to the web.

It is worth to try to find it (sorry, no translation to English yet). It made me happy, made me think and I spent a really good time.

Because is hard to live in a city and in a country where such terrible things happen. Epidemics. Drought and then a flooding. Two crimes inspired by crazy men "inspired by god" (although in last Friday's shooting at the Mexico City Balderas subway station, it was also a Christian believer the only civilian that confronted the criminal: its clear that fanatics, not religion, are the problem).

It is not only legitimate, but sometimes necessary to find a useful evasion. No doubt, novels like Asmov's and Bef's are two excellent choices.

(By the way, the cover posted its not the Mexican edition of Gel azul, it's the Spanish one… I liked it better, it's drawn by Bachán.)

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Other realities

By Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, August 26, 2009

In 1957, Hugh Everett III, a United States physicist with a prince's name (not Rupert Everett, a British actor as, I mistakenly stated in the printed version of this column on Milenio Diario), proposed one of the most intellectually stimulating ideas in modern physics: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It is not clear whether this theory can be really called "scientific" because, like a lot of cosmology, it does not have direct evidence, although it does have a coherent physical and mathematical background. It tried to solve a big problem of the most popular version of quantum mechanics (the Copenhagen interpretation): that the equations predict that particles can exist in "superposed states", unless these are observed.

To ridicule this idea, Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, postulated the mental experiment of the cat that shares his last name, which would be simulotaneously "dead and alive" as long as it is not observed. Something contrary to common sense.

Everett's version proposed an astonishing solution: the moment the particle -or the cat- is observed, instead of randomly choosing one of the two possibilities, the universe bifurcates, giving birth to two parallel universes: in one universe, the cat lives; in the other one, it dies.

Although in a recent interview in Discover magazine mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, one of today's most brilliant minds, labeled it as "insanity", the fact is that Everett's odd -but not absurd- theory still is of interest to a lot of physicists.

But in 1941 Jorge Luis Borges, one of the glories of Hispano-American literature, had published his extraordinary short story The Garden of Forking Paths, where he prefigured the many-worlds theory. Sometimes the connections between science and literature are as amazing as the most audacious scientific theories.

Last August 24, Borges would have turned 110 years old. Maybe in another possible reality, where he is more long-lived, he does. In another one, it is normal to be that old.

Maybe there are alternate realities where the Mexican educational system is not in wrecks, where future teachers don't massively flunk the test to select them. Where their union leader is not elected for life, and can pronounce words with more than two syllables such as "epidemiologic", or initials such as "H1N1" without confusing numbers "1" with letters "l".

Where vital parts of Mexican history are not omitted from school textbooks, such as the Spanish conquest or the three centuries of colonial domination.

Maybe.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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