Abstract
Amazon (2013):
Since its emergence in the seventeenth century, science fiction has been a sustained,
coherent and subversive check on the promises and pitfalls of science. In their turn,
invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits
of reality. Different Engines explores how this fascinating symbiosis shapes what
we see, do, and dream.
From Johannes Kepler's Somnium to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, science fiction has emerged
as a mode of thinking, complementary to the scientific method. Science fiction's field
of interest is the gap between the new worlds uncovered by experimentation and exploration,
and the fantastic worlds of the imagination. Its proponents find drama in the tension
between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Its readers, many of them scientists and
politicians, find inspiration in the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Brake and Hook's Different Engines is a unique, provocative and compelling account
of science fiction as the arbiter of progress.