Do Your Research

 

When I am writing science fiction, sometimes I have to do research to make sure what I am talking about makes sense scientifically. With fantasy, you can pretty much make up any rules you want as long as they are consistent. With science fiction, you should be grounded in the real world as much as you can be. It is about getting the facts right. You should follow the laws of physics. Or, if you are going to break one (it can only be one) there has to be a logical reason for breaking it. It has to be scientifically plausible.

My soon-to-be released Novella The Methane Sea takes place on a planet with methane ice (solid) and methane lakes (liquid), and methane in the atmosphere (gas). I had to look up the freezing point, melting point and boiling point of methane (at something like standard pressure). Even though I didn’t talk about those values in the story, I do talk about temperature changes, and the methane does change from one state to another, so I had to know what those values were so I wasn’t spouting off misinformation. Notice I said, “at something like standard pressure.” Freezing points, melting points and boiling points for all substances change as the air pressure changes. This is why if you live at high altitude you have to boil your eggs longer for them to be fully cooked. Water boils at a low temperature at high altitude because the air pressure is lower. Also, in the story I gave the temperature readings in degrees Kelvin which made sense for the environment it takes place in, but most people don’t have any frame of reference for Kelvin degrees. I wanted my readers to know what the Centigrade and Fahrenheit temperatures they equated to. So, I looked up the conversion and included them in footnotes. I also made my fictional planet with some similarities to some of the outer moons of our solar system (Titan, Europa, Enceladus). So, it has an atmosphere rich in nitrogen and methane with some ammonia mixed in.

I once wrote a short story called “Susurrations” (it appeared in Daikaijuzine, March 2021). In this story there is a rocket travelling to Saturn’s moon Titan. The rocket engines have the ability to push the rocket at a constant acceleration of 0.2 G to the halfway point. Then it flipped around and decelerated at 0.2 G for the rest of the trip. This gives the crew the equivalent of 1/5^th Earth gravity for most of the trip. But I needed to know how long it would take to get to Titan accelerating and decelerating at 0.2G. I reached out to my science fiction community on Facebook, and several people pointed me to a formula for the calculation. The story isn’t really about the acceleration or how long it takes to get there. These are just side notes, but I wanted it to be accurate. You don’t want to take the reader out of the story by making a false statement. Even though most readers would not know the difference, some would (and I would).

I read a lot of nonfiction science just for my own enjoyment and enlightenment. Doing such casual reading is a form of doing research even if there is no goal in mind. Some of it is going to sit in a little back pocket of my brain in case I should ever want it. I might not ever use anything from the Carl Sagan book Cosmos, but I might someday. Who knows? Or it is more likely that I will say to myself, I read something about that . . . where was it? Maybe in one of Sagan’s books . . . I read a lot of history too, which might come in handy if I ever write a time travel story, though it is more likely that I will have to dig in and do some proper research if I want specific events and dates.

Most of my writing does not require research, but when it does, it is kind of fun and fulfilling to find the answers for myself.

Star Liner