Popular Science: The golden rules of science fiction and my own work

Isaac Asimov

These are, according to Isaac Asimov, the two golden rules of good science fiction:

1. Any scientific claim (even a prediction) must always be compatible with current science. It would not, therefore, be good science fiction a novel where the squaring of the circle with a ruler and compass was achieved, because it has been shown mathematically that this is impossible. Or traveling through space at a speed greater than that of light, without using some scientific trick that makes it possible to achieve it, such as going through the world of tachyons.

2. Predicting social consequences is better than predicting technical advances. Thus, in a hypothetical novel written in the nineteenth century, predicting the parking problem would be much better than just predicting the car. An example of this kind of good science fiction, mentioned by Asimov in this regard, is Robert Heinlein's short story Solution Unsatisfactory, written in 1941, which not only predicted the atomic bomb as a means of ending World War II (in which the United States were not yet taking part), but also predicted the subsequent equilibrium between the great powers and the permanent threat of a war of extermination.

To be exact, these two laws are my elaborations of what Asimov wrote in two popular articles published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: Future? Tense! (1965) and O Keen Eyed Peerer into the Future (1974). To be even more exact, Asimov's laws were three and, similarly to his three laws of Robotics, he called them the three laws of Futurics.

Throughout my life I have published nine science fiction novels that, taking into account the basic themes of the genre, mentioned in my previous post, can be classified thus:

The conquest of the solar system: In this sub-genre I have published three novels, two of which deal with the exploration of Mars, and the other (which continues where the first ends) with that of Venus. Their titles are: Under an orange sky, about the beginning of Mars colonization; Descent into the Hell of Venus, about the first manned expedition to Venus, with a parallel political and journalistic plot taking place on the Earth; and Operación Quatuor (Operation Quatuor), where the colonization of Mars is well advanced, to the point that there is already a city on that planet, Articity, as well as several bridgeheads of the various opposing groups.

Interstellar travel: In this section I just have one novel, The History of the Earth-9 Colony, where I have used the two forms of the second method of travel mentioned in my previous post: travel at speeds close to the speed of light, and travel through the world of tachyons. This book can also be considered as an example of the next sub-genre, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, since the planet in which the story takes place contains, not just one, but two intelligent species, who were living there before the arrival of the human characters. But in fact this story hides a completely different subject, alien to science fiction, that I am not going to describe here. If I did, the reader would be deprived of the possibility of discovering it personally.
Strong artificial intelligence is the subject of two of my works, which show two possible ways of achieving it, in theory: Jacob's Ladder and the aforementioned Operación Quatuor. I won't say more, to avoid spoilers, but I'll simply add that, although in these posts I usually declare myself skeptical about the possibility of achieving strong artificial intelligence, in my novels I am less incredulous. Otherwise, there would be no novel, and furthermore this allows me to introduce some of my philosophical ideas about the effect of the hypothetical construction of intelligent artificial beings on our way of thinking, according to Asimov's second golden rule.
Time travel: Regarding this sub-genre, I say the same as in the previous one: I don't think it's actually feasible, but taking it for granted allows me to mix two different genres: science fiction and historical novel. In A Face in Time I introduce the French Revolution; this book also contains another probably impossible future advance: matter transfer of human beings through space. And in Beyond the Black Hole my protagonist is projected to the country of the Dakota Indians, shortly before the battle of Little Big Horn.
Another sub-genre that I didn't mention in the previous post is evolutionary science fiction, which raises questions related to biological evolution. Thus, in The Last Dinosaur, I addressed the subject of the possible alternative appearance of intelligent beings right here on Earth; and in Los Moradores de la Noche (Dwellers of the Night), not yet translated into English, I pose the problem of the exact origin of man; in other words, since which point in the evolution of our ancestors can we speak of human beings with the right to be treated as such.