Science In SF

The opening installments of Robert Heinlein's Future History describe successive technological advances culminating in a Moon landing which becomes the basis for the Lunar colonization and interplanetary travel described in Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth.

James Blish's Cities In Flight, The Seedling Stars and Haertel Scholium begin by describing the scientific discoveries that become the bases of the subsequent histories:

two FTL drives, spindizzy and Haertel overdrive;

antiagathics (+ the germanium-based Oc dollar);

the instantaneous Dirac transmitter;

pantropy, the science of adapting human beings to different environments.

 

Both Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History begin by introducing a predictive science of society.

 

In Anderson's Technic History, the hyperdrive is invented between the first and second installments.

 

Anderson's Maurai future history, Twilight World and Vault Of The Ages presuppose the misuse of scientific knowledge in a nuclear war.

 

Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains begins with the discovery of gyrogravitics, gravity control.

Anderson's Starfarers begins with the scientific discovery of an extra-solar civilization.

Unsurprisingly, science underlies science fiction. We have discussed the origin of science. See here and here. Appropriately, James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy begins with a historical novel about Roger Bacon, the founder of scientific method. The Trilogy continues by examining the idea that knowledge can be gained through magic but ends back in one of the sf futures of Blish's Haertel Scholium. His historical novel, Doctor Mirabilis, is like a prequel to the sf of Heinlein, Asimov, Blish and Anderson.