Contrary to popular belief, the goal of science fiction (SF) is not the prediction of the future, but rather to explore the multitude of possible futures. That is, SF is the literature of what-if scenarios. This book explores more than a dozen such possibilities, with each chapter ending with a fictional illustration of the theme of that chapter (time travel, topology, alternate worlds, computer intelligence tests for politicians, invisibility, and more). The fictional treatments ask and sometimes answer questions like:
What might happen if you discovered how to induce nuclear fusion in room temperature water?
Could a combat soldier, and an intelligent, lethal weapon, develop a deep emotional relationship?
If an archeologist, using x-rays, discovered the lost casket of Jesus in an Egyptian museum, would he open it? If he did, what might he find? (This tale appeared in print two years before the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)
What if you received a letter, addressed specifically to you, from a man who died decades before you were born?
Could a little boy who tries to fix the family television set save Earth from an interstellar invasion?
In 1971 D. B. Cooper high-jacked a commercial airliner and then bailed-out (with a $200,000 ransom) into a snowstorm and vanished forever. Or did he?
What might happen if you ate a four-dimensional doughnut?
The stories in this book will challenge your imagination, and perhaps make you wonder Well, maybe that could happen!
Introduction.- Far-Out Math.- Interstellar Invasion.- Revenge.- Invisibility.- Digital Pictures.- Time Travel.- Future War.- Topology and the Fourth Dimension.- Alternate Universes.- National Security.- Computers & Society.- Far-Out Physics.- Super-Science.- Artificial Intelligence.- Religion.
Paul J. Nahin is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of 25 books on mathematics, physics, and the history of science, published by Springer, and the university presses of Princeton and Johns Hopkins. He received the 2017 Chandler Davis Prize for Excellence in Expository Writing in Mathematics (for his paper The Mysterious Mr. Graham, The Mathematical Intelligencer, Spring 2016). He gave the invited 2011 Sampson Lectures in Mathematics at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine.
