Science Fiction Physics

The acclaimed Science of Discworld centred on an original Pratchett story about the Wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fiction narrative about Big Science. In The Science of Discworld II our authors join forces again to see just what happens when the wizards meddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity on Earth. London is replaced by a dozy Neanderthal village.

Southern Africa, 2065. Liyan Madikizela is four months pregnant when her partner Tym, a deep-web researcher, reads out a puzzling entry from an Englishwoman's 1836 travel journal. While visiting a lush farm with a manor house set below a loaf-shaped mountain, the writer reportedly saw men in futuristic suits and helmets carrying armaments, some of which seemed to emit light. But when Tym tries to view remnants of the farm via satellite imagery, it remains a mystery. Finding the place becomes his obsession, and later, when city inhabitants flee to the countryside after a solar storm, he ...

In Zoom, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an informative and entertaining style and a knack for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

In this highly original book, Russell Blackford discusses the intersection of science fiction and humanity’s moral imagination. With the rise of science and technology in the 19th century, and our continually improving understanding of the cosmos, writers and thinkers soon began to imagine futures greatly different from the present. Science fiction was born out of the realization that future techno-scientific advances could dramatically change the world.

Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk, a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate, became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane.

Four sci-fi short stories where you'll find good computers, people who regret their past, and an explanation for something you're familiar with.

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

Under the Stars: Bedtime Astrophysics transports curious kids and inquisitive adults on an incredible journey through the night sky. Explore our solar system from the comfort of your cosy bedroom. Find out why the sky is blue. Fly around a black hole and peer inside! Learn why Jupiter has stripes. When astrophysicist Lisa Harvey-Smith isn't looking skyward, she is answering the smart questions of school kids. Her engaging storytelling brings the night sky to life, giving amazing new perspectives to young explorers who are always asking, 'Why?'

String Theory.Quantum Mechanics.Joey Ramone.Zoe Stanton’s life used to be normal. Which is to say normal, but by no means average. Then her mother died and with her passing came the era of the new normal; one that was anything but.And now her father was gone too.Zoe arrived home from school one afternoon to discover her father missing and his basement office in ruin. What’s more, there was a curious new addition to the Stanton family home. An old utility closet had mysteriously transformed into a portal to the infinite. Zoe was about to venture deep into the weird world of quantum theory.

The President’s Mars advisor, quantum physicist Dr. Kendo Tanaka, is found dead in a Northern California motel room. The administration knows it is the work of The Community, a clandestine organization determined to end Mars exploration. Reporter Rudy Ventana, with the help of Linda Rainwater, a White House aide, is asked to investigate Tanaka’s death. Within hours of meeting, they find themselves in mortal danger, pursued by Community assassins. What dark secret is The Community hiding on Mars?

Did NASA really spend millions creating a pen that would write in space? Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Does stress cause gray hair? These questions are a sample of the urban lore investigated in this audiobook, Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths. Drawing from Scientific American’s “Fact or Fiction” and “Strange But True” columns, we’ve selected 58 of the most surprising, fascinating, useful, and just plain wacky topics confronted by our writers over the years.

Discovery & Destruction In the electrifying second installment of the Galactic Travelers series, Frank Bryant returns to his home planet, now a bustling urban center transformed by human expansion. As a key figure in the Wormhole Initiative, Frank is immediately thrust into turmoil when his team comes under attack on their research station. Frank’s homecoming is bittersweet. While he reconnects with family and revisits his childhood haunts, he cannot escape the looming crisis. Powerful corporations and government agencies vie for control of the Initiative’s groundbreaking discoveries, ...

In this SF Short Story, Cosmologist Miranda inherits the quest to find the equation for everything. From two dead men. She knows she can solve it. She's afraid her predecessors did, too. She's scared enough to ask Walter, adrift since they split, to be there when she succeeds.

What if reality isn't what we think it is—and someone found a way to prove it? When brilliant physicist Dr. Marcus Emerson demonstrates a technology capable of altering the fabric of reality itself, he feels he has invented humanity's next big leap forward. However, as test subjects begin to experience vivid other worlds that refuse to remain contained in the laboratory, perception psychologist Dr. Aria Vance learns a horrifying truth: the machine isn't simply altering how people perceive the world; it's fragmenting existence itself. Following the strange disappearance of their most ...

The Story of the Universe was inspired by a very old idea—that the universe is one river and that galaxies, stars, planets, and people are all whirls and eddies in the universal flow, arising in the universe as naturally as whirls and eddies arise in a fast-flowing river. The universe arose once upon a time in a place that created time and space. It spread in darkness like an exploding black hole until there was light. It was pure energy in pure symmetry—almost.

From the stars they came to study us. Instead, they discovered what it truly means to be human. When five advanced alien scientists crash-land on Earth, their mission of passive observation becomes a desperate year-long struggle to understand humanity's true nature. Disguised as humans and embedded in key positions across society—a political consultant, an environmental researcher, a university professor, a military contractor, and a hospital doctor—they discover that Earth's inhabitants are far more complex than their data suggested. Led by Captain Zara, the youngest commander in her ...

Dark Space #7 Somewhere between atoms, something is watching her back. Twelve-year-old Lina Chen never meant to unravel the universe. But when she straps on her uncle’s forbidden invention, she shrinks into a glowing, alien world beneath the surface of reality—where atoms orbit like planets and something strange lurks in the silence between. As Lina dives deeper into the layers of scale, she discovers she’s not alone. Something ancient is alive in the Pattern, and it doesn’t want her to leave. With time warping and reality folding around her, Lina must find her way home before she ...

In a world where death has become predictable, one girl holds the key to saving time itself. Sixteen-year-old Lena Mitchell has always seen people's death dates floating above their heads—a curse she's kept secret her entire life. But when everyone in her small town suddenly shares the same expiration date, she realizes her curse might be the only thing standing between her community and annihilation. As a shadowy tech corporation's temporal experiment spirals out of control, Lena must join forces with Marcus, a mysteriously immune teenage barista, and Jimmy, the son of a brilliant ...

The afterlife doesn't come with a manual. In fact, Hart and Bowler (two ordinary but dead men) have had to work out the rules of their new existence for themselves. It's that fact (along with being unable to leave the boundaries of their city center, unable to communicate with the other lost souls, unable to rest in case The Beast catches up with them) that makes getting out of their situation a priority. But Hart and Bowler don't know why they're there in the first place; if they ever want to leave, they will have to find all the answers to be able to understand the physics of the dead.

How does Einstein’s description of space and time compare with Doctor Who? Can James Bond really escape from an armor-plated railroad car by cutting through the floor with a laser concealed in a wristwatch? What would it take to create a fully intelligent android, such as Star Trek’s Commander Data? Exploring Science Through Science Fiction addresses these and other intriguing questions, using science fiction as a springboard for discussing fundamental science concepts and cutting-edge science research.