Different engines

"The symbiosis of science and science fiction shapes what we see, do and dream." "Since its emergence in the 17th century, science fiction (SF) 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 is the first trade book to explore 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, argue Professor Mark-Brake and Reverend Neil Hook SF'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."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction, Science Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.