Robot Dreams

After all, if we may prove accurate in our predictions, we may prove inaccurate as well, sometimes ludicrously so.

Such embarrassment becomes particularly acute when one’s stories are reprinted in a collection such as this one. When an author starts young, lives out a normal lifetime (as I seem to be doing) and has written continuously, there is likely to be included in the collection stories that were written and published thirty and forty years before and that leave ample scope for any cloudiness in the crystal ball to show up.

This doesn’t happen to me as often as it might, for I have several things going for me. In the first place, I am well acquainted with science and am not likely to be wrong in fundamentals. Secondly, I am cautious in my predictions and do not flail away madly in contravention of scientific principles.

Nevertheless, science does advance and sometimes produces completely unexpected results in a very few years, and this may leave a writer (even me) high and dry on a pinnacle of false "facts. " The worst luck I had in this respect turned up in connection with a series of science fiction novels I wrote for youngsters between 1952 and 1958.

That series dealt with the continuing adventures of my heroes on various planets of the solar system, and in each case, I carefully described the planets in strict accordance with what was known about them at the time.

Unfortunately, it was in the course of those very years that microwave astronomy was developed and shortly after those years that rocket probes began to be sent out. The result was that our knowledge of the solar system was startlingly advanced and we learned something new and unexpected about every single planet.

For instance, in my description of Mercury in Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury, I had it facing one side to the Sun, as astronomers then thought  –  and that was essential to the plot. As it happens, however, we now know that Mercury turns slowly and that every portion of its surface gets sunlight part of the time. There is no "dark side."

In my description of Venus in Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, I had a planetwide ocean, which, at that time, seemed at least possible. It was essential to the plot as well. However, we now know that the surface of Venus is at a temperature far above the boiling point of water, and an ocean  –  or even a drop  –  of liquid water on its surface is totally impossible.

As for Mars, in my book David Starr: Space Ranger, I managed to get the description right in many ways. However, I didn’t take advantage of the huge extinct Martian volcanoes that were discovered about fifteen years after the book was published. What’s more, I did talk about the canals (dry ones), which were found to be nonexistent, and I introduced intelligent Martians remaining from a long-dead surface civilization, and this is really extremely unlikely.

Jupiter and its satellites appeared in Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, and while I was careful to describe all the worlds, I naturally missed some major points that were not discovered till twenty years afterward. I said nothing of the cracked world-girdling glacier of Europa and nothing of Io’s active volcanoes. I didn’t mention Jupiter’s huge magnetic field. Nor, in Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, did I mention some of the interesting features of the Saturnian satellite system and rings.

The only book in the series that survived intact (scientifically speaking) was Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids.

Fortunately, there was a way out. Honesty in the best policy and when the Lucky Starr series was reprinted in the 1970s, I insisted on inserting introductory notes explaining where the astronomical details had become outdated. At first, the publishers were a little reluctant to do so, but I explained that I could not allow the young reader to be misled, or, if he were knowledgeable, to have him think that I was not. In went the notes, and, I am glad to say, sales were not adversely affected.

None of the stories in this collection was as badly shattered as my poor Lucky Starr books were, but there are things to beware of.

In the first place, there is one place where I missed something that was (in hindsight) very obvious, and I have been kicking myself over it for the last couple of years.

In "The Martian Way," the same story in which I triumphed with my description of the spacewalk, I had my heroes approach Saturn and actually enter the ring system. In doing so I very carefully described the rings, making use of observations from Earth’s surface to do so.

Now, from Earth’s surface, some 800 million miles from Saturn, we see the rings as solid and unbroken except for the black line of the Cassini division that seems to separate them into two rings. The portion of the rings closest to Saturn is considerably dimmer than the rest of the ring system, and that portion is usually considered a third ring (the so-called "crepe ring.") And that was how I described the rings as seen by my space-travelers in the story.

Yet it stands to reason (at least, now it stands to reason) that if we could see the ring system from a nearer distance, we would see greater detail. We would see divisions  –  places where fewer particles were in orbit so that we would see dimmer lines separating brighter lines  –  divisions that would simply not be seen at great distances. Earth’s surface telescopes would just blur them out and record only the thickest of the dim lines  –  the Cassini division.

The closer we would get, the more numerous and the thinner the bright lines would get as visibility became clearer and clearer, until, when we were as close as we could get and still see all the rings, the rings would look like a grooved record  –  which is what they do look like.

Suppose I had figured this out in 1952 and had described the rings in that fashion. Even if I had missed such things as shadowy "spokes" in the ring, and "braided" rings, things that were absolutely unpredictable, it would have been great if I had imagined the fine divisions. That was an easy deduction to make and if I had described the rings in that fashion then, as soon as those rings had been probed I would have announced that I had anticipated what they had discovered. (You think that modesty would have held me back? Don’t be an idiot!) How great that would have been! As it is, my failure to see this marks me down as not very bright, and that is there, for all to see, in "The Martian Way." To be sure, no astronomer saw the truth about the rings in 1952, but what of that? An astronomer is only an astronomer and his vision is naturally limited. I am a science fiction writer and more is expected of me.