On 4/11/2024 2:23 PM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 11/04/2024 09.08, James Nicoll wrote:
>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>>
>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>>
>> https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/
>
> Wasn't Vonnegut's "Ice Nine", as portrayed in _Cat's Cradle_, inspired
> by polywater?

Not that I recall. There actually is an 'ice-9' phase of water, but it
only stable temperatures below -40C, and 213 Mpascals of pressure
(about 300 atmospheres).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg

pt

On 4/11/2024 4:08 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>
>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>>
>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>>
>> https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/
>
> There's a very nice short story based on The Origin of Consiousness
> and the Bicameral Mind.
>
> Anyone recall title & author which I forget?
>
There's an entire book based on it, but I too forget the author and
title. Late 80s, set in ancient Greece. I think 'sand' may have been
in the title.

pt

In article <l7r1ahFebf0U2@mid.individual.net>,
ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:

> In article <l7r18mFebf0U1@mid.individual.net>,
> Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:
> >In article <87frvrll0w.fsf@enoch.nodomain.nowhere>,
> >Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
> >>
> >>jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
> >>
> >>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
> >>>
> >>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
> >>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
> >>>
> >>>
> >>https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theor
> >>ies/
> >>
> >>There's a very nice short story based on The Origin of Consiousness
> >>and the Bicameral Mind.
> >>
> >>Anyone recall title & author which I forget?
> >>
> >
> >Turtledove. "Bluff".
> >
> >He sort of revisited the idea in _Between The Rivers_
> >--
>
> BTW, has TOOC been "disproved"? I'm not sure how you could do that.

Assuming I remember the basic idea correctly, I can't see how it can be
demonstrated (even with profoundly unethical experiments).

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
�-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

On 11/04/2024 15.57, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) writes:
>> In article <uv99i1$1quav$1@dont-email.me>,
>> Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 11/04/2024 11.55, James Nicoll wrote:
>>>> In article <cf1g1jlvc4325bh5aqt8bn5akut0qsc96f@4ax.com>,

>>>>> Wasn't there at least one novel based on the Steady-State Universe?
>>>>
>>>> Starchild, by Pohl and Williamson.
>>>
>>> Also, _The Triumph of Time_, by James Blish.
>>>
>>
>> Interesting, in that the coda for "Cities In Flight" is distinctly
>> non-steady-state.
>
> Is it? To paraphrase another classic, a circle has no end....

Yeah, it is. At the end, Amalfi decides to roll the dice and start
his next universe in an explosive manner.

If one's really into hard-core retcons, one could say that the universe
that he explosively created is our big-bang universe, which is a direct
descendant of a steady-state universe.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Always use apostrophe's and "quotation marks" properly.

On 11 Apr 2024 21:00:01 GMT, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
<tednolan>) wrote:

>In article <l7r18mFebf0U1@mid.individual.net>,
>Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:
>>In article <87frvrll0w.fsf@enoch.nodomain.nowhere>,
>>Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>>>
>>>jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>>
>>>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>>>>
>>>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>>>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/
>>>
>>>There's a very nice short story based on The Origin of Consiousness
>>>and the Bicameral Mind.
>>>
>>>Anyone recall title & author which I forget?
>>>
>>
>>Turtledove. "Bluff".
>>
>>He sort of revisited the idea in _Between The Rivers_
>>--
>
>BTW, has TOOC been "disproved"? I'm not sure how you could do that.

Until we can /define/ "consciousness" in a way that allows us to
detect it from the outside (as it were), neither proof nor disprove
are possible.

Whether such a definition would make it possible is a different issue.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On 4/11/2024 8:49 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
> On 4/11/2024 4:08 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
>> jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>
>>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>>>
>>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>>>
>>> https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/
>>
>> There's a very nice short story based on The Origin of Consiousness
>> and the Bicameral Mind.
>>
>> Anyone recall title & author which I forget?
>>
> There's an entire book based on it, but I too forget the author and
> title. Late 80s, set in ancient Greece. I think 'sand' may have been
> in the title.

I was thinking of Wolfe's "Soldier in the Mist", but what I can find
online include no references to TOOC.

pt

On 11/04/2024 19.32, Cryptoengineer wrote:
> On 4/11/2024 10:08 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
>> Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>>
>> Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>> but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>>
>> https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/
>
> Thomas Gold was an astrophysicist, but like academics, opined in areas
> well outside his training.
>
> He, along with Fred Hoyle, pushed the Steady State Universe model for
> many years. He also proposed the existance of a 'deep hot biosphere' of
> primitive bacteria living in bedrock pores down several miles.
>
> Those bacteria supposedly fed on hydrocarbons, which Gold proposed were
> created by non-biological process further down in the Earth, and
> gradually rose to the surface. This implied that the supply of gas and
> oil was essentially unlimited.

This idea was used in L. Neil Smith's _Henry Martyn_, or at least mentioned.
I can't say how significant it was because I only ever got forty or fifty
pages into that train wreck.

<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?670>

--
Michael F. Stemper
Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

begin fnord
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:

> There's a very nice short story based on The Origin of Consiousness
> and the Bicameral Mind.

Not what you're thinking of (because not short story) but Stephenson's
_The Big U_ mentions bicameralism; one of the characters believes in it
but the narrative does not appear to take a stand. If I recall it turns
up in _Snow Crash_ as well.

--
Steve Coltrin spcoltri@omcl.org
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press

On 11 Apr 2024 14:08:18 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
wrote:

>Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories
>
>Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor
>but not before they've found their way into science fiction!
>
>https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-inspired-by-disproven-scientific-theories/

Polywater was even used in a Star Trek episode, "The Naked Time".

I believe that Pierre Boulle's "Monkey Planet" was similar enough to
the infamous series of movies based on it (the first one, of course,
was worthwhile, if only it had been left to stand on its own), Planet
of the Apes, that it was also based on the discredited theory that
white people were descended from chimpanzees, East Asians were
descended from orangutans, and black people were descended from
gorillas, as advocated for in the works of Carleton S. Coon.

One side of Mercury always facing the Sun, Venus being, if not a
tropical paradise, a livable hot swamp world, and Mars having a
breathable atmosphere... stories too many to count were based on
these, and it was reasonable to exclude them, as his column would have
been far less interesting if it included such obvious cases.

John Savard

This doesn't qualify...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jdBiz_vwe0

a YouTube video telling us silly people who believe in other planets
and the stars being other suns that the Bible clearly states we live
on a flat Earth with the dome of the firmament over it, and therefore
that must be the truth, and the globe Earth must be a lie.

If somebody in 1960 predicted advanced cheap computers making the
Internet possible, and that someone would use it in 2024 to promulgate
videos like this, would anyone have believed a story based on such a
far-fetched premise?

John Savard

Francis Bacon succeeded in creating characters in his dramas -
stories within stories - and we need to know at least a bit
about them in order to be knowledgeable of the Myths that
constitute the history of our culture and shine light on our
present predicaments.

The famous Iago, from the play "Othello, The Moor Of Venice" is
one such character.

IRISH PROVERB: "If two neighbors are fighting in the morning, it
means that an Englishman spent the night with one of them"

IMHO-this is a play, consciously and purposefully about the
masterful duplicity and the staggering success of English
diplomacy, characterized by Iago: the ability to create war.
It also carries forward the Shakespearean theme of hatred of
women, dare I make so bold. Desdemona, like sweet Ophelia,
fares rather poorly at the hands of her female friends and
(male) lover(s). Iago's wife seems a bit of a Lady Macbeth.
The horrible death of Desdemona goes on forever. These are my
preliminary impressions - subject to revision!

(excerpt)

<https://thehiddenlifeisbest.com/post/to-othello/home>

"What's Going On?"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnFy1luxL0A>

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.