I thought I'd start a new thread on science books that may be helpful for SF writers. Perhaps when someone mentions some science or SF concept they have questions about (as there seems to be in the SF/F forum today), the questioner can be pointed to an appropriate book/essay/whatever in this thread.
In the past month or two I became aware of and have read Charles Sheffield's "Borderlands of Science" which is a science book specifically written for SF writers. It's from 1999, but virtually all of it's still good despite what the intro says. Having read Sheffield's fiction, I knew it would be good, but I thought it would only touch on a few things, because, well science and the results of scientific investigations are a big area of study.
I was quite surprised to see how complete it really is. It mentions the "EPR paradox" and quantum entanglement which we were discussing in recent months in another thread here. I had read about it years before (as I have most other things he writes about here) but I hadn't got the part about how it implies instantaneous transportation of information (violating Relativity's speed-of-light limitation). Sheffield discusses it here under "2.3 Quantum Transportation:"
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671319531/0671319531___2.htm
He goes over many different fields (and subfields within them such as genetics),as you can see in the table of contents in the link below.
The first six of 14 chapters are online here:
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671319531/0671319531.htm
but it's also available as a cheap mass-market paperback, and I highly recommend it.
In the past month or two I became aware of and have read Charles Sheffield's "Borderlands of Science" which is a science book specifically written for SF writers. It's from 1999, but virtually all of it's still good despite what the intro says. Having read Sheffield's fiction, I knew it would be good, but I thought it would only touch on a few things, because, well science and the results of scientific investigations are a big area of study.
I was quite surprised to see how complete it really is. It mentions the "EPR paradox" and quantum entanglement which we were discussing in recent months in another thread here. I had read about it years before (as I have most other things he writes about here) but I hadn't got the part about how it implies instantaneous transportation of information (violating Relativity's speed-of-light limitation). Sheffield discusses it here under "2.3 Quantum Transportation:"
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671319531/0671319531___2.htm
He goes over many different fields (and subfields within them such as genetics),as you can see in the table of contents in the link below.
The first six of 14 chapters are online here:
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671319531/0671319531.htm
but it's also available as a cheap mass-market paperback, and I highly recommend it.
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