We will dedicate this series to the soul of the great departed "Dr. Nabil Farouk".. and we begin with the scalpel and the forceps to explain the literature of "science fiction".. and to probe its depths and learn its secrets.. and whoever has ideas for a science fiction novel and does not know how to write it, or wants to enter this world of literature and become a "science fiction writer".. I hope this series will help him. Let us begin today with a simple introduction. - Science fiction specialists still disagree to this day over its definition: some people said: "the literature that blends science/ scientific theories with the imagination".. Dr. "Nihad Sherif", the pioneer of science fiction, described it as a reconciliation between science and imagination.. and before him "Jules Verne" described it as "the first step of science". - The American writer, inventor and thinker "Hugo Gernsback" set a harder definition.. deciding that it is "romance and imagination blended with science, in an acceptable form, from which I, as a reader, must come out.. with a spark of knowledge". Meaning that the reader, according to this definition, must learn something new from the novel.. the professor of literature "J. O. Bailey" raised the ceiling a little and decided that "the science fiction novel is an innovation in itself.. it must lay the foundations for new technical inventions, or new theories".. meaning that if a science fiction novel does not establish a new scientific theory or an invention that does not exist and could be made.. then in his view it is useless. The late "Dr. Nabil Farouk" walked along these lines.. so in his novels he spoke of real inventions.. that appeared later. Such as the "hologram".. and "ion rays" as a weapon.. and at the same time you always learned something new from his novels.. a new theory.. a scientific fact.. something new, necessarily. In general there are about 98 definitions of science fiction.. I am of course not going to list them all, otherwise whoever is reading this post will throw the phone out of the window. - But let us agree that it is a literature.. in which drama or romance or others blend with science.. within an "acceptable" framework.. meaning it should be entertaining and grip the reader.. not play with the reader's mind or deceive him.. because the science fiction reader is one of the hardest critical minds you could meet among the reading public. When I watched the famous film "William Wallace".. I liked the film but was annoyed the whole time.. the Scottish kilt worn by "Mel Gibson" did not appear, and the people of Scotland did not wear it until two years after the date of the events in the film.. "Denzel Washington" in the film "Malcolm X" shouts in a scene of gunfire and injury: "Somebody call 911...!".. the 911 service in America appeared three years after the death of Malcolm X. This is exactly the mentality of the one who reads science fiction.. he will employ everything he has stored in his mind of sciences while he reads the novel.. so do not put him off it with mistakes like these. - This is an important point as well.. the science fiction writer must have read a very great deal.. and have a great deal of information that he constantly updates.. before he takes up the pen and writes this kind of literature. - If the science fiction reader feels that you are deceiving him, or is not gripped by your novel from the first few pages.. he will never read for you again, even if afterwards you turn into "Herbert George Wells".. either he adores you from the first time.. and keeps chasing you for the next novel and the one after it and so on.. or else farewell... - You will find science fiction a kind of literature greatly beloved by children, by people of wild imagination, and by scientists and inventors alike.. when you sit with any inventor thinking about an invention or setting out a theory you will find that he always begins his thinking with "imagine if?" or "what if".. this is a kind of scientific riddle on which almost all inventions are built. Do you remember, when you were small, the question you asked yourself as you watched a grown-up man driving a car? Why is there a "clutch" and what is it for.. why do they not just make a petrol and a brake! Do you remember, I wonder? That actually happened.. when two men who owned a mechanics workshop in Brazil, "José Braz Araripe" and "Fernando Lehly Lemos", asked themselves the same question that you asked as a child.. without ever hearing about them, nor about the automatic gearbox.. nor knowing one letter about "transferring torque from the engine to the gearbox". "What if"? That is the question that science fiction always poses. - You will be amazed in this episode when you learn the number of innovations that changed the face of the world and came out of science fiction novels. The novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea".. which the Frenchman "Jules Gabriel Verne" wrote in the year 1870.. about the captain who withdrew from mankind and lived in his armed submarine imposing by force whatever he wanted on the world, and called himself "Nemo".. meaning "no one" in Latin.. this novel inspired the young mechanical engineer "Simon Lake" and he began to think.. "what if??" and in the year 1893 "Simon" was presenting to the United States Navy the drawings of the first submarine loaded with weapons capable of diving in the open sea, 12 metres long.. he called it "Argonaut 1". The strange thing is that the same science fiction novel.. captivated Professor "Hugh Bradner", so he set about designing a diving suit like the one mentioned in the novel.. and from it came the diving suits we wear today. And the United States entered the era of naval supremacy. A young man named "Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky" went to study in France and read a science fiction novel called "Clipper of the Clouds".. and the idea of "the helicopter that flies" stuck in his mind.. and he returned in the year 1909 to present to the Soviet Union his first drawings of a real helicopter in history. Most of the inventions that humanity uses today came out of the crucible of science fiction. - Science fiction is the father of horror and fantasy literature, not the other way round.. and it is as old as humanity itself.. "Amun", the lord of the winds, who used to carry soldiers and chariots and transport them on the winds in the blink of an eye.. what is that but flight and escape from gravity? A famous theme among the themes of science fiction. The assistant of "Ra".. who used to move through space instantly.. what is that but "teleportation"? "Isis", who went searching for the parts of her husband, and gathered them and stitched them together, and then with a special charge of energy, which she acquired from "Ra", breathed life into him anew.. and "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's" masterpiece was influenced by her, about the doctor who gathers parts from the bodies of the dead to make a complete, superhuman being whom he awakens with electricity from a lightning bolt on a rainy night.. before he is surprised that his creation has turned out a deformed monster.. "Frankenstein".. here we are talking about medicine and physics together.. even if the general context of the story is terrifying. You will be amazed if you know that technically.. academics and experts classify the novel "Frankenstein" as a science fiction novel.. not horror. The sorcerer who blends herbs and liquids in a pot in a cave to cause a catastrophe.. the science of chemistry in its primitive, newborn form.. "Zeus" grants his son "Perseus" a shield and a sword and a helmet so that he can fight "Medusa" and reach the terrifying sea monster the "Kraken". These weapons will kill supernatural beings.. so they must therefore be of a special calibre, different from what they would be if "Perseus" had had them made by a blacksmith in the workshop district.. and accordingly "Zeus" issues his orders that "Vulcan" make them.. the god of fire and metals and volcanoes.. the most skilled blacksmith in the universe. What is that but "metallurgy".. the science of metals, which a child loved at the time the legend of "Perseus" was written.. and at the time the author of the legend blended the known sciences with his imagination? - There is a property in the literature of science fiction that you must take note of while you are writing it.. any novel into which even a very small fragment of the world of science fiction is put, it will swallow it entirely and it will fall under its heading.. meaning if you bring "Abd al-Ghafur al-Burai" and "Morsi" into Hajj "Ibrahim Sardina's" agency hitting each other with laser swords.. this story will fall entirely under the heading of science fiction.. even if there is nothing in it but that one shot. - The way the sentence is written in a science fiction novel makes a difference.. a word out of place makes a difference and can make the reader abandon the whole novel. - Look at the first scene in the video.. from the film "Ironman".. the hero "Antonio Stark" was held by terrorists in a small cave.. and they asked him to make them a certain missile because he was a brilliant engineer and weapons maker.. "Tony" makes for himself a small power generator.. to fit it into the iron suit he is making without the terrorists noticing so that he can fight them and escape... "Tony" here says that this tiny generator produces 3 gigajoules per second of energy. The phrase "joule per second" is the scientific pronunciation of "watt". The first sentence you will hear more on the tongues of physicists.. while engineers prefer the second.. but the two sentences are one and the same. The generator that "Tony Stark" is talking about produces twice the energy that a city like London consumes annually.. and approximately the energy that a nuclear reactor produces in a whole year. Assuming that this device is made with super-advanced technology and from an unknown conductive metal.. that can withstand this charge.. that means that "Tony", if he fitted this piece into his chest, would turn into a piece of charcoal in seconds.. here this is sheer nonsense to anyone who understands these matters.. but you accept it and carry on watching or reading.. but why?? What is the secret? Why did you accept this blatantly unscientific sentence? You accepted it because "Tony Stark".. said it in a scientific way that seems dazzling.. that covers up the scientific error behind the sentence itself.. "Robert Downey Jr.", by the way, as an actor.. is very skilled at this particular thing.. meaning you will find him saying scientific terms and not getting them wrong.. and he may also, according to what we know of him from the media, improvise them successfully.. and they let him do it. "Tony Stark" could have said: "this generates energy like any nuclear plant".. you would not accept this sentence at all.. even if you were a graduate of the National Institute for Mattress Stuffing ("this little thing is like a nuclear plant??"). But you may accept the sentence "3 gigajoules per second" with fascination and let it pass.. even if you were a professor of engineering. The one who does not understand is dazzled by the sentence.. and the one who understands follows on with interest and passion so as to know "how". - Remember this well.. the sentence and the way it is written make a difference.. it either makes the reader continue the novel with passion.. or throw it out of the nearest window after two pages. You also accept this because this is "Tony Stark's world".. a world that has its rules and you must play by them.. "Stark" became an expert in "nuclear astrophysics" in one night after a bit of reading.. that is of course impossible by our rules.. but you are playing in his world.. the one in which he is the most intelligent of the people of the earth and the most brilliant of them, to a degree that goes beyond imagination. Exactly as when you enter the world of "Mortal Combat".. you cannot be annoyed that there is someone shooting lightning from his hands.. and as when, as a child, you enter the world of "Mama Fatima Salem and Karnaba" and "Mama Nagwa and Boglaz".. you cannot say "how is the puppet talking".. you are simply playing by the rules of this world.. and that leads us to the next point. - As a science fiction writer you can create your own private world.. with its own rules that you bind yourself and the reader to together.. you can take me to another planet whose gravity is 10 times the gravity of the earth.. or a tenth of the gravity of the earth.. you can put there animals that die from water or oxygen.. that is your own world and you are creating it entirely. Here I, as a reader, will have to play by your rules and continue with passion.. how did you create this world on scientific foundations.. and what will actually happen if gravity is ten times greater? You cannot violate these rules of your world when you are cornered by events.. meaning you cannot tell me that Superman is weakened by kryptonite.. and then a while later tell me "no, it did not weaken him this time".. that will make the reader lose trust in you.. and demolish your world, which you built with your own hands on paper, entirely. The company "Marvel" is a good example of this.. it made a world of its own.. in its world there are new rules.. it binds itself and the viewer to them.. some of them are subject to the science we know.. some "could happen tomorrow".. and some are not subject to science.. some of it is soft science fiction.. and some of it is hard science fiction.. and some of it is sheer nonsense.. but these are the rules of the "Marvel universe". Creating your own world, a famous technique among the techniques of science fiction. Who has forgotten the planet "Arghuran" in the world of Dr. Nabil, may God have mercy on him? The complete planet with its inhabitants and their temperaments and their customs and their plants and their animals? Who has forgotten "the World of Shadows"? Who does not remember the terrifying worlds in issue number 50, "The Legend"? Who has forgotten S18 the super robot, and its world and its history and its planet of origin and its scientists and their laws? - Details in science fiction are extremely necessary.. and they show that you, while writing, care about the reader.. that you are not talking just anything. "Marvel" is likewise a model of vast attention to detail in the world of science fiction. The details are extremely dazzling.. making you unable to contain yourself from admiration at the sheer precision.. and because of that.. you will cheerfully overlook other matters.. the writer makes you feel that he respects your mind the whole time and does not deceive you.. and that satisfies you as a viewer or as a reader. The second scene in the video is another example from Marvel.. look at the helmet of "Ironman" with the appearance of the villains, for instance, as it transforms from the normal blue flight mode to the red combat mode. The third scene, "Ironman" saved "Spider-Man" from drowning.. notice the drops of water as they slide off the metal of the suit and fall? Dr. Nabil paid attention to these details too, with extreme precision.. it counts in Dr. "Nabil Farouk's" favour here that he was an individual.. one man writing.. "Marvel has a team writing it as numerous as the hairs of your head.. and behind them another team reviewing.. and a team reviewing the reviewers.. and so on.." "Nabil Farouk" did this alone.. who does not remember "Akram" and his surprise that after he had fired 10 bullets, the weapons cabinet had run out and he was forced to change it? How many times did he speak of an alternative history and you found the era of the "Third Reich" in his novel.. with real names of real generals and leaders, who were around "Hitler" and appeared in the novel in their positions, such as "Himmler".. without inventing new names that have no place? There are very many details of this kind in all the works of the late writer.. these details are very small, and if the writer had not included them you would not have noticed.. but he paid attention to them.. and that made you feel that the writer respects your mind and does not deceive you. It seems that time has stolen us away today.. and this introduction has run long.. so we will continue our talk and compare soft and hard science fiction and learn what they are, with new examples, later. And there remains more to be said.