Space shuttle Columbia blasts off./NASA
Sept. 10, 2003
What If . . . ?
What if a chunk of foam had struck the wing of a space shuttle as it blasted off into space?
Asking the right question:
Who? what? when? where? how? why? These are the questions that an investigative reporter will ask when preparing to write a story. A science fiction writer asks one more: "What if . . .?"
"What if . . ." questions are important to more than science fiction writers, of course. You ask yourself this question each time you think about the consequences of something you plan to do—or not do. What if I ask the new girl out to a movie? What if I don't get a good mark on that test? What if my singing wins the competition? What if my parents decide to move this summer?
That answer to a "what if . . ." question is called a speculation. In other words, you are making your best guess, based on your experience and knowledge, as to what could happen.
In exactly the same way, a science fiction writer looks at something in science, such as an invention or discovery, and asks "What if . . .?" The next step is to make an informed guess as to what might happen—a speculation about the consequences. Here are some examples:
What if medical advances meant some people didn't need sleep?
Nancy Kress wrote a science fiction story called "Beggars in Spain" that considered the kind of society that might result if some people could work productively without ever going to sleep while the rest of humanity could not.
What if we could grow human organs?
The movie Blade Runner, based on a Philip K. Dick short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", looked at a future in which biological replicas of humans were used to grow spare organs for humans.
Challenge:
Write a "What if . . .?" question based on a science article in this or last week's Science News for Kids.
Send it to us at challenge@snkids.com. It might become the basis for a very interesting story. Perhaps even your own!
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