The Lowest Heaven

INTRODUCTION

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between astronomy and science fiction has always been a close one. After all, even in the Space Age, the nearest most of us will get to experiencing the wonders of deep space for ourselves is through the medium of books, films and television (and perhaps, if we’re lucky, virtual reality too).

Modern astronomy is characterised by vast distances and immense spans of time which challenge the imagination of even the most hardened cosmologist. Douglas Adams perhaps came closest to a concise description of the true scale of the Universe when he wrote “Space is big”, but such enormous numbers are almost impossible to grasp in any meaningful way beyond the purely mathematical. However, science fiction can give us a way to make at least some sense out of those mind-blowing figures. By setting human stories within that immense canvas writers can help us to see ourselves as part of the wider cosmos, and perhaps give us an inkling of what that might actually mean. No wonder that many of today’s professional astronomers can trace their interest, at least in part, to an early encounter with science fiction.

The connection between science fact and science fiction has never been more pervasive than it is today. The visual language of astronomy is everywhere in contemporary science fiction, from book covers to the backdrops of films and television shows. Vistas from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Cassini probe have inspired the scenery for Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, and with their enormous popularity these shows and movies bring astronomical imagery to a much wider audience. Artistic licence even allows them to ignore the fact that that the original images have been enhanced and manipulated, and rarely show the Universe as it would appear to human eyes.

The connection works both ways. As yesterday’s science fiction becomes today’s science fact it can sometimes seem as though we live in a science-fictional universe. Above our heads, Arthur C. Clarke’s geostationary satellites encircle the equator, while the imprints of human boots still mark the surface of the Moon. Further out, a fleet of robot craft explores the distant reaches of the Solar System and rovers trundle across the dusty landscapes of Mars. And for the first time in human history we can now look up at a night sky full of stars and know for sure that almost every one of them is a sun with its own system of planets orbiting around it.

Meanwhile, science fiction itself is colonising the Solar System. There’s a Martian crater called Asimov and an asteroid named 25924 Douglasadams (not to mention 18610 Arthurdent). The icy plains of Saturn’s giant moon Titan are being named after fictional planets from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, its mountains for the peaks and ranges of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. And in 2012 the site where NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down on Mars was christened Bradbury Landing in honour of the writer whose Martian Chronicles inspired generations of scientists and engineers to set their sights on the Red Planet.

Science fiction also has the luxury of being able to pursue an idea just because it’s interesting, fun or beautiful, even when science has abandoned it and moved on. In the 1890s, astronomer Percival Lowell’s Martian canals were the subject of serious debate, while H. G. Wells’ “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic” were not entirely inconsistent with the latest thinking in planetary science. Within a few years the Royal Observatory’s E. Walter Maunder had shown that the canals of Mars were an optical illusion, and new observations confirmed the Red Planet’s freezing temperatures and a flimsy atmosphere devoid of oxygen. Even so, the idea of ancient Martians irrigating the deserts of a dying world continued to inspire writers and artists well into the twentieth century. Today, these unscientific fictions, inspired by astronomy but not constrained by it, still say something important about our place in the Universe. Ray Bradbury’s stories of Mars, written in the 1940s, retain their power because they capture something about the human urge to explore beyond our home planet, and our inability to leave our foibles and failings behind us. This would be true whether or not his poetic evocations of the Martian landscape resembled the high-definition images beamed back by NASA’s Curiosity rover (although, eerily, they do).

This anthology of contemporary science fiction stories is being published to coincide with the exhibition Visions of the Universe at Royal Museums Greenwich. Using just over a hundred astronomical photographs and drawings the exhibition sets out to show how advances in imaging technology have repeatedly transformed our understanding of the Universe and our own place within it. But, as well as explaining the history and the science behind the images, Visions of the Universe deliberately presents them as beautiful and awe-inspiring objects in their own right. Like the stories in this book, it encourages a very human response to scientific data.

The Lowest Heaven demonstrates what happens when a group of today’s most imaginative writers are let loose in the gigantic playground of the Solar System. Some of these stories use cutting-edge science to give us a plausible glimpse of what the future might have in store. Others take their inspiration from the rich history of speculation, legend and myth with which past generations have tried to make sense of the cosmos.

Each story is illustrated by an image selected from the historical collections of Royal Museums Greenwich. Sometimes the connection is obvious, in other cases more oblique, perhaps inspired by a mood or a line of dialogue. The wonderfully retro cover artwork, specially commissioned from the artist Joey Hi-Fi, is inspired by another object from the Museum’s collection: a wall hanging showing the orbits of the planets and other Solar System bodies. Produced in the 1850s by the Working Men’s Educational Union it was designed to explain the latest ideas about the cosmos to an audience eager for new ideas. It’s an attempt to encapsulate what humans have discovered about the cosmos and their place in it. Like the stories in this book, it makes us think again about what it means to be alive in an astonishing, beautiful and sometimes frightening universe.

Marek Kukula

Public Astronomer

Royal Observatory Greenwich (part of Royal Museums Greenwich)

May 2013