A couple of years ago I posted on an informal study I experimented with on the relationship between astronomers and science fiction. Since then there have been a few other publications in this area, so I thought it was time to update on this study of astronomers - my astronomer-ology. [Note: this is a bit different to a normal entry on this blog as it won’t draw specific examples from SF, but instead look at its relationship with a scientific field as a whole and lean more towards academic references.]

Career and Motivation in Astronomers

Back in 2022, I took an interactive poster to the summer UK National Astronomy Meeting. Professional astronomers reading the poster during lunch, coffee and social sessions were offered stickers and asked to indicate on a pair of (unnumbered) axes how much they liked science fiction and whether or not it had influenced their career choice. Amongst the UK astronomy community there was a clear majority who felt they both loved science fiction and had been influenced by it, although there were also a sizable minority who felt less strongly on each account, and a small group who expressed significant dislike for the genre.

The study was designed just for fun and had a number of significant flaws as an experiment, but I was hopeful then that other people might be inspired by the idea and get some equivalent statistics for their own research communities.

Well, this summer French astronomer Samuel Boissier, a director of research at the Laboratoire d'astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), did just that. France, of course, has a long tradition of scientific fiction, ranging from authors such as Jules Verne and Camille Flammarian (himself a prominent astronomer) to the long-running Valérian and Laureline comic book series (1967-2018, Christin & Mézières), which spun off as hollywood film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in 2017 (dir. Besson), influential comic anthology Métal Hurlant (1974-1987), TV series such as Missions (2017-2021) and films such as La Jetée (1962, dir. Marker) and The Fifth Element (1997, dir. Besson). Since the annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Journees 2024 de la SF2A) did not have the option of physical posters, Boissier launched a survey which asked members of the national scientific community to answer a short online questionnaire, quantifying their opinions of the genre on a scale from 1 to 10. Of those contacted, about 110 responded to the survey. The results, which can be found in Boissier’s arxiv paper and are discussed further in this article were interesting.

This found that professional French astronomers show the same bias towards liking SF as their English counterparts, but are much less likely to consider themselves influenced by the genre. This cultural difference could have many causes, and a larger and less self-selecting sample is needed for robust statistics - in both countries. Nonetheless, as Boissier notes:

“Both astronomers, and Science Fiction lovers could sing along the lyrics of the Ballad of Serenity: “You can’t take the sky from me”.”

I can also add another small dataset here. In September 2024 I lectured at the UK STFC Advanced Cosmology and Extragalactic School (ACES) - a week-long training exercise aimed at students mid-way through their doctoral studies in astrophysics. Since this provided a captive audience of professional astronomers at roughly the same career stage, and with the agreement of the school director, I ended my lecture by drawing a pair of axes for the liking/influence parameter space on a white board and encouraging the students (specifically including those who disliked SF) to add a point to the diagram that represented themselves before going to their lunch break. I carefully avoided joining the resulting cluster around the board in order not to influence the students.

Of those attending the school, 27 placed points on the board, representing a large fraction of those present on the day. Amusingly, a number of the students (well trained astrophysicists!) chose to give themselves error bars (indicating the range of uncertainty on their answers). A couple of interesting points were also reported to me later by those present. At least one student noted that they had been highly influenced and engaged with SF but had come to dislike it more as they did so. Another pointed out that after the pattern of responses emerged, some students likely felt a peer pressure to add to or fill in the existing trend - a valid concern about interactive and constructive surveys of this kind.

Neither the NAM survey nor the ACES survey were quantitative and the axes were slightly different in each case, while the French survey exercised more restriction on possible answers and again had different axes. However digitizing images of the NAM and ACES results and scaling all three surveys onto the same pair of axes [1] it can be seen that the trend in these independent samples is actually remarkably similar.

The ACES students were generally more law-abiding than those at NAM, not exceeding the limits of the axes provided and so not reproducing the “asymptotic branch” seen in the latter survey. They were also slightly less likely to consider themselves strongly influenced on average. The fraction of astronomers with a dislike of science fiction is the same in all datasets (11% in each case [2]). However those in the UK were more likely to believe themselves influenced by SF, even if they disliked it - than those in France, perhaps as a result of the pervasive presence of science fictional representations of both astronomy and scientists in the UK (as Boissier also noted).

I’d still be very interested to see this experiment repeated in other settings, countries and disciplines, particularly if a high participation fraction can be achieved.

Exoplanets and Science Fiction

Perhaps naturally, other recent discussions of the connections between astronomy and science fiction have focussed on the subfield of exoplanet science and astrobiology. This is a natural area of overlap, with both science and science fiction in the field driven by logical extrapolation from our current understanding of the nature of planetary environments or potential alien life in other solar systems.

Some interesting recent work has come from the European Astrobiology Institute and the work of Julie Nováková, herself a science communicator and a published science fiction author. The Institute has now released two anthology volumes. In each, science fiction established and new authors are paired with research scientists in the field and each short story is accompanied by an essay on related astronomy and astrobiology topics. The second of these anthologies, Life Beyond Us, was released in 2023 (eds. Nováková, Law & Forest) and follows on from Strangest of All (2020, ed. Julie Nováková, which is available for free download). The introduction to the latter notes that a key role of science fiction is: “translating the often “dry” language of science into the exciting adventure science ultimately is, but may not appear at first sight.”

This approach is far from new. Such anthologies - combining fiction with essays or extracts from factual sources - have been around for many years [3], with examples including The Book of Mars (1976, eds. Hipolito & McNelly), and Farewell Fantastic Venus (1968, eds. Aldiss & Harrison). In such anthologies the target audience is science fiction literate but a reasonably high level of scientific knowledge or interest is also assumed. These books (the EAI volumes in particular) are notable for being aimed at a fairly serious science fiction reading audience but also directly confronting the assumptions, accuracies and inaccuracies in each story from a scientific viewpoint. A slightly less rigorous approach has long been taken by other anthologies, in which each story may be introduced by a very short factual comment, but the emphasis is very much on the fiction. Examples here might include Asimov’s Science Fictional Solar System (anthology, 1980) and Brotherton's Science Fiction by Scientists (anthology, 2016).

Of course all these books also make the point that, while science fiction narratives are often tailored to the best of our current understanding, particularly in the subgenre of Hard SF, they must also prioritise narrative and character development - occasionally at the cost of a precisely accurate representation.

Researchers Puranen, Finer, Helling and Smith (arXiv:2405.00684, published in the Journal of Science Communications, 2024) opted to consider the representation of exoplanets on a more statistical level, rather than close reading of individual texts. They used the technique of Bayesian network analysis (commonly used to evaluate trends and groupings in data in astronomy) to study whether changes in our understanding of the exoplanet population are reflected at all in trends in the corpus of science fiction narratives. They considered 142 fictional exoplanets, mostly from well-known franchises or from a community-sourced list, with a near-equal split of those described before and after the first exoplanet discovery.

While the details are technical and statistical, the authors concluded that planets shown in a variety of media after the discovery of exoplanets in 1995 are less likely to support human life or to show habitable environments than those portrayed in earlier media. Planets with only non-intelligent native life have become more common. As the authors suggest:

“With increasing cultural awareness of extreme exoplanets and of the concept of a habitable zone, creators may have been inspired to explore what stranger new worlds outside this zone might be like.”

 Inevitably, there are limitations in the methodology. No survey of exoplanets in science fiction can hope to be truly exhaustive, and the authors consciously limited the number of entries from large franchises such as Star Trek or Star Wars. Crowdsourcing is also more likely to produce a list of planets with “interesting” properties which may not be entirely typical entries for the genre. However this kind of network analysis certainly shows interesting trends and it’s good to see more quantitative analysis of the interplay between science and SF.

The lead author of this study, Emma Puranen, also produced an article for Sky at Night magazine that described her own relationship with science fiction, including editing another science fiction:fact paired anthology, Around Distant Suns (published in 2021). 

The relationship between SF and astronomy has come up for discussion in other forums over the last year or two. Julie Nováková (editor of the EAI anthologies mentioned above) also authored a report on the recent IAU symposium “Towards the Discovery of Life Beyond Earth and its Impact” which took place in Durham in April 2024. Her meeting report in Nature Astronomy mentions the use of future studies motivated workshops exploring possible consequences of a life discovery and noted that: 

“An interesting thread weaving through the background of the conference and appearing in multiple talks and discussions was science fiction (SF) as a factor inspiring people to pursue science, influencing perceptions of astrobiology and serving as a reference point. Sometimes it was mentioned in a negative context, in fears that the associations of alien life with SF could undermine astrobiology as a valid and serious scientific discipline or distort public expectations, but neutral references or positive experiences with SF in stimulating interest in science outweighed those.”

Amongst the “fears… SF could undermine astrobiology” she references is a comment article by Jeancolas et al (also in Nature Astronomy, 2024, and so unfortunately paywalled) which felt the need to defend astrobiology as a discipline from the idea that it is simply science fictional and based on implausible premises.

The idea that science fiction can impact negatively on popular expectations from astronomy (with a possible knock-on effect for education and funding) is certainly still present in the community - even those members who are themselves keen consumers of SF.

Science Fiction as an Educational Tool in Physics

Other recent work connecting astronomy and science fiction has looked at the genre as an educational tool in physics.

Widening the field from astronomy, Ran et al, writing in the journal ​​Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research (December 2023), reported a study on digital science fiction narratives constructed by adolescent students in an interdisciplinary course (delivered either after school or as part of an elective module) that integrated STEM and digital literacy learning. Students were able to use a combination of text, video, comics, audio narration and other media to tell a story designed to communicate issues of scientific relevance. Most chose to address environmental science and climate change narratives, and their work was assessed with regard to the successful integration of scientific content with the presentation, and the depth or quality of that scientific information. As the figure reproduced here shows, many students showed a higher success in integrating material (i.e. narrative construction) than in the quality of the science content presented. The report mostly addressed the framework for the assignments and their assessment, noting that the activity allowed students to engage with the topics in their own words and creatively and also encouraged digital literacy.

Moving from the statistical to the practical, Childers et al (2023) reported on the lecturers’ perceptions of science communication at SF conventions. Other studies have reached beyond the anglophone focus of much previous work. Recent academic work has looked at the use of Isaac Asimov’s short story The Last Question (1956) in the teaching of the concept of entropy in Brazil (Ferriera et al, 2023), and the writing of science fiction stories as an instructional strategy by pre-service teachers in Turkey (Ağlarcı Özdemir & Önen Öztürk, 2023). The tone of these reports is generally positive, although noting potential pitfalls along the way.

The connection between science fiction and professional astronomy is now well established (at least in western Europe and anecdotally elsewhere). Academic studies on the connection between professional science, science communication and the genre are becoming more rigorous and numerous. In just about every case, the authors highlight both the advantage of science fiction in providing an accessible and engaging pathway into science communication or teaching, and the potential misconceptions and distortions that must be avoided. There is certainly clear interest in developing further frameworks for progress in this area. There is also plenty of room for interaction between the fields. Science Fiction magazines have traditionally carried science fact articles, and there’s increasing acceptance of the reverse. Short stories appear at the end of every edition of the well regarded journal Nature, and discussions of fiction are common in others. A 2023 article in Nature Physics Reviews went further - challenging readers to determine whether a range of terms belonged in the canon of physics (A) or in Doctor Who (B). As they noted in conclusion:

“If most of your answers were A, you perhaps should watch more science fiction. If most of your answers were B, you probably don’t realize how strange a lot of physics terminology is.”

Science fiction will always have more freedom than science fact, explore further into the unknown and reach a wider audience. This is its nature and its strength. As I’ve noted before, science and SF exercise the same mental muscles and pursue the same goals - to extrapolate from existing factual evidence according to known scientific laws and make predictions. Where they differ is in the extent of the valid extrapolation and the timescales on which evidence might verify or disprove the predictions made. They also differ significantly in public perception. Both have the potential to mislead if badly communicated. And both have the potential to engage, educate and entertain if done well.