Futures Author

Robert Metzger splits his time between research on semiconductors and writing science fiction. His stories tend to be set in the not-too-distant future, building on the latest scientific theories and pushing them close to breaking point. Metzger, who contributes to this week's Futures (page 394), explains to Nature how the boundaries between his research and his fiction writing sometimes blur.

How does your science influence your sci-fi?

There is very little difference between doing science and writing science fiction. When you do science, you pray that the data that have so far made no apparent sense coalesce when you ask the right question. When I write science fiction and really get into it, and create my world and have all these interlocking pieces, it becomes alive. And when it becomes alive it has to follow rules. For me a lot of those rules are physics-based or mathematics-based. Figuring out these rules in my science fiction provides me the same ‘gee-wiz’ moment that I get from science.

What about your fiction influencing your science?

For one story, I thought up a scenario where crop-harvest residue sunk into the ocean combats global warming. I worked up some formulas to see if it was possible and checked with some colleagues and found it wasn't as far out as I initially thought.

You describe your writing as ‘hard’ science fiction. What does that mean?

In hard sci-fi, you can't violate any known laws of physics — but you really need to stretch them. If you do stretch your physics — such as going faster than the speed of light — you have to explain it. If you do traditional sci-fi, it's like, you engage the warp drive and the good guys win.

What's your biggest science-fiction influence and why?

A lot of Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton. As a kid, I thought: ‘Wow, this stuff is different. It's not my world.’

What do you read now?

The bulk of my reading is non-fiction.

How else do you bridge the science and science-fiction community?

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America association puts out a quarterly bulletin. For the past ten years I've been doing a column that helps people incorporate real science into their writing. I show them that science is far weirder than most fiction.