200 Words
Kevin Maney
Science needs stories. This is what I wish to tell scientists. Science by itself is a fantastic contribution to society, but it remains stuck behind the curtain for the majority of people, so much magic amid a dense fog of quark-this and nano-that. If science wants to bring the rest of society along, it needs stories. People are wired for stories. We remember them. They affect us. They help us understand the incomprehensible.
Carl Sagan knew that as well as any scientist ever. I’m not sure what scientists thought of Sagan’s science, but he knew how to tell stories about science, embedding them in the imaginations of the masses. How many dollars in funding have cosmologists since gotten because philanthropists or politicians understood the science through Sagan? Impossible to measure, of course. But I bet it’s significant.
The best science-fiction writers use stories to tell us about real science -- Asimov, Sterling, Stephenson…Gene Roddenberry. Think of what they’ve done to make your lives as scientists easier.
So, please, think about the stories in your science. Not explanations -- but stories. If you’re not a natural writer, find ways to communicate your stories to people like us -- writers who are practiced in structuring a narrative so it finds a pathway into readers’ memories.