Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, March 14, 2005 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Stanley Schmidt

"Science and Science Fiction"

ABSTRACT -- The best science fiction tries to explore possible futures, or at least futures not demonstrably impossible, by developing backgrounds consistent with science now known or science that could be discovered in the future. A science fiction writer and editor who is also a physicist discusses similarities and differences in how science fiction writers and scientists view and use science, and how science fiction and real science and technology influence each other.

SPEAKER -- Stanley Schmidt began selling stories while completing his Ph.D. in physics at Case Western Reserve University. He continued freelancing while an assistant professor at Heidelberg College, contributing numerous stories and articles to original anthologies and magazines. As editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact since 1978, he has received many award nominations both for editing and for his own fiction. A member of the Board of Advisers for the National Space Society, he has been an invited speaker at national meetings of that organization, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and numerous museums and universities. His varied background as musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist has influenced his five novels and short fiction. His nonfiction includes the book Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer's Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms and hundreds of Analog editorials, some of them collected in Which Way to the Future?.