Science fiction not only reflects our reality but often foretells it; famously, the automatic doors on Star Trek’s original Enterprise predated (and, some fans say, inspired) their real-life counterparts. Ariel Waldman, former advisory chair to NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, spoke with PW about exploring the facts behind science fiction in her new book, Out There (Running Press, Aug.).
How does your background inform this book?
I started out in art school pursuing a career in graphic design. A few years in, I was at home watching a documentary series about the early days of NASA. I found it really inspiring, and when a friend mentioned she’d just met a NASA employee at a conference, I asked for his email and sent a shot-in-the-dark offer to volunteer. Instead, I got a job. My role was to bridge the gap between communications inside and outside of NASA, which gave me access to astronauts and researchers. Over time, I picked up on the interplay between science fiction and science, and started a podcast called Offworld, which discussed all things space and pop culture, a lot of the same subjects covered in Out There.
What led you to spend five weeks filming a documentary in Antarctica?
It was at NASA that I learned about people working in Antarctica, and I got hooked on the idea of working with those research teams in a place that can be very Mars-like. Antarctica has a lot to teach us about space exploration, how it might feel when you’re on another world. When we look at the planets in our solar system, for example, we see planets that don’t have vegetation. In Antarctica, the life that’s there has had to invent unique ways to adapt, such as surviving inside of rocks. The Dry Valleys are said to be one of most Mars-like areas on Earth because of the incredible dryness and the incredible cold; it’s like going to space while staying on Earth.
In one section of the book you talk about whether spaceships should be sentient. What do you make of the recent fascination with AI?
It’s great that this topic has now entered a phase where everyone has opinions about it. From a pop culture perspective, it’s exciting to see it be something everyone can discuss, not just highly technical people. In the book I talk about spaceships becoming sentient because that’s a natural next discussion after ChatGPT and stable diffusion, what AI could look like in our homes and our living environment, what it means to have living systems powered by AI.
What subjects intrigue you most in science fiction?
Exploration of the line between human and not-human is classic; that debate will play out for the rest of time. I love how nuanced and fascinating you can make it when you put technical innovation into a world and have people interact with it. I’m interested in the fraught topics—there are researchers working to see if we can put people in suspended animation to travel elsewhere. There’s a lot of debate about it, and there are really big implications when you take something that profound from science fiction and try to make it reality. It’s exciting that we can talk about it, but also terrifying because if we get it wrong, we’re playing with people’s lives.
