This is one of those nights when the fog lays low and the sky is completely shrouded. No stargazing tonight! So, let’s talk about science fiction again.

Robert A. Heinlein is one of my favorite authors. I re-read several of his books each year, ranging from the short stories that make up The Past Through Tomorrow to his posthumously published Grumbles From the Grave. There’s a lot of science in his books, but really what sets his work apart is the storytelling. At its heart, science fiction still remains a genre about characters and what happens to them. Now, those characters might be robots or they might be 1,000-year-old men or equally old women being rejuvenated, but they gather your interest immediately because they tug at your emotions. You might not realize you’re learning a little science along the way as you follow the exploits of Lazarus Long or Maureen Johnson or Libby or Pixel or any of a dozen other well-cast characters.

There are so many great people spread across the science fiction universe, and I look forward to visiting each one every time I pick up one of the hundreds of SF books I own. My current list includes a re-read of many of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series of books. There’s plenty of science, lots of characters to which she has done something, and we get the privilege of watching them work their way out from under whatever she’s loaded on their shoulders. All the while using cool space ships, advanced biological technologies, and faster-than-light travel.

So, if science fiction is largely about people, where does the science come in? I once had somebody ask me to point out what I learned about astronomy in these stories I was constantly reading. Just off the top of my head, I could point to ideas like light-travel time, the constraints of slower-than-light travel, the makeup of neutron stars, the life cycles of stars and planets, and the structures of ice worlds. Sure, I also learned about those things in astronomy class, but often I’d read about them in my SF books first, and only later learned the technical aspects in my coursework. Somehow the SF stories made those objects seem more alive—more real.

I do think that an interest in science fiction is what keeps me “in space” mentally, if not physically. The fact that I could soar to the planets in my imagination, led by the storytellers of science fiction, has always kept my interest in space travel and astronomy alive. The human face and endless possibilities my favorite authors trolled out in front of me like bait may well be why I like science so much!