Back in June, during the week I attended the Starry Heaven workshop in Flagstaff, organizer extraordinaire Sarah K. Castle put together a little panel discussion on the interactions between science fiction and actual science. Titled "Science + Fantasy = Science Fiction," the panel brought seven scientists and writers together to talk about how science inspires science fiction and vice versa.

Besides Sarah, who is both geologist and SF writer, the participants included writer Bradley P. Beaulieu (brad_beaulieu), writer and futurist Brenda Cooper (bjcooper), biologist and computer scientist Dan Greenspan (blog), biologist and physiologist Stan "Bud" Lindstedt, and science historian David S.F. Portree ("Beyond Apollo").

Everyone's five- to seven-minute presentations were fascinating, and I wish I had time and memory sufficient to recap them all. Instead, though, I've been meaning for a couple of months now to post the loose notes I wrote up for my little presentation. Here they are:

Here, as they investigate Hasta's ability to teleport objects, they talk about magic and science:

"I wonder what the cost will turn out to be," said Hasta, sitting back on the track and stretching her arms.

Ivan had finished setting up the blocks again and moved back to squat next to her. "The cost of what?" he asked.

Hasta regarded him through narrowed eyes. "The cost of this magic. In all the books, the magic never comes for free. There's always a cost."

"Like a dragon demanding a pound of flesh," Ivan said, chuckling, "or our souls starting to rot inside us?"

"Something like that."

He shook his head. "This isn't magic," he said. "It's just physics. It has to be. There's an energy expenditure, obviously, but maybe that's just why we feel tired and wrung out afterwards. Like when you exercise to build muscle."

"Moving a grown man half a mile? I paid attention in physics, Ivan. That takes a lot of energy."

"Sure it does," Ivan said, "but there are plenty of ways to hack around that requirement. What else do you think physics is?"

"Physics is hacking?"

"Totally. See, a hack is basically just a shortcut for getting something done, so you don't have to waste a lot of time and effort on it. Or resources. Like, you might hack into a record company's servers so you don't have to waste resources buying their music."

"You might," Hasta said.

"Hypothetically," Ivan granted. "Or you might write some code that monitors all a bank's transactions and diverts the rounded-off fractions of cents into a secret account. Those would be different kinds of computer hacks."

"Sure," said Hasta, motioning for him to keep going already.

"Okay, then you have what I think of as reality hacks, which are tricks the smartest of us monkeys have been figuring out for all of recorded history. Like, I could never move a giant boulder by myself, no matter how hard I pushed against it. I just physically can't muster enough force. But if I employ the hack we call a lever, suddenly my pathetic amount of force is multiplied. In fact, there's an immutable formula you can work out that tells you exactly how much extra force you get depending on the length of the lever and the distance of each end from the fulcrum. With the right lever positioned correctly, I can move that boulder!"

"That's basic physics," Hasta said. "But I guess I never really thought of it as a hack before."

"We hack reality in so many ways, it isn't even funny," Ivan said. "Levers and pulleys and screws to multiply force. Optics to bend light the way we want it to go. Turbines to generate electricity, and water, wind, and fossil-fuel power to turn the turbines. Conductors to move the electrons from one place to another. Battery chemistry to store and release that energy. Airfoils for lift so we can ply the atmosphere. Clever hacks, every one of them, all designed to save us time and effort and make our lives easier."

I see scientists as the ultimate hackers—women and men who work hard to figure out how the physical world around us works, so they can then take that knowledge and find shortcuts for performing tasks we want and need done more easily than we could otherwise do them.

That's where I get the inspiration for a lot of the different ideas I end up using in my fiction. What do I want or need done more easily? What sorts of things would make my life easier or better? Maybe I'm an avid hiker, and I'd like to be able to go out into the wilderness for days on end without worrying about how I'm going to carry in all the food I need. Well, I can imagine that maybe there's a way I could engineer my body to use chlorophyll like a plant does to convert sunlight into sugar.

Maybe when I get back from my hike, there's a black tie wine bar science gala that's black tie only, and it would sure make my life easier if I didn't have to run back home and change into my tuxedo. Well, maybe I can imagine a way that my hiking clothes were made out of reprogrammable fabric, and by downloading an open-source pattern from the Internet I can tell my clothing to change color and shape until I have on the proper evening wear without having to change.

Maybe at that black tie gala my friend Greg tells me about a book he's read recently that sounds really great—like say Nation by Terry Pratchett—and I'd like to be able to start reading it tonight without worrying about trying to find an open bookstore. Maybe I can imagine a way that I could read books on a screen instead of... Well, actually, that happened last night, and within three minutes I had bought the book and downloaded it to my iPhone.

Now, the trick to good science fiction is to not just make these wish fulfillment stories. The trick is to know enough about the way the world works, and the way people work, to make some guesses about how your fictional invention would affect the world in unexpected ways, and not just in the way you originally intend. Like, what would it be like to live in a world of people with green skin who didn't necessarily have to grow food or slaughter animals to get nutrition. What would happen to farmers? How would people migrate and where would they live. (Hint: Maybe chlorophyll people really wouldn't want to live in Chicago, where we can go a full month during the winter without seeing the sun.) And what other scientific advances and social changes, both good and bad, would be necessary in order to support that change?

The bottom line for me is that writing science fiction is my way of hacking reality, and by imagining the world I would like to live in, I hope I'm helping to inspire the people who are actually smart and dedicated enough to make that world real.

Our second day of workshopping was much like the first. Four first-fifties were done over the course of the day, with a delicious catered lunch of quesadillas in between. Everyone seems to be settling in and getting more comfortable, though as a result the critiques went longer yesterday than they did on day one.

Afterward a handful of us went shopping for a few things that were lacking in the rooms here, including half-and-half, real coffee beans, toilet paper, and sufficient beer. Then most of us converged once more on the balcony at the Zane Grey Ballroom, where the beer, as I may have mentioned, is ridiculously cheap, at least by the standards I'm used to.

In the late evening, we convened back here for pizza (I'm not sure how, but I exercised unprecedented willpower in making a salad for myself instead), beer (did not abstain at all), and an informal discussion about certain aspects of the publishing industry. I would say more, but what happens at Starry Heaven stays at Starry Heaven. If we decide it should stay at Starry Heaven.

This morning we're all heading over to the house where most of the men are staying, where Brad Beaulieu is making us breakfast. Then we'll stay there for our critique sessions. Today will be the last day of first-fifties, and my book is last. I haven't been very nervous until now, but I'm started to feel it a bit. I probably won't be able to eat a lot of lunch.

Tomorrow we begin breaking up into various groups of three for in-depth critiques of full novel manuscripts. That's when things really start to get intense! Can't wait.

The first official day of Starry Heaven went very well, I thought. We critiqued the first four of our twelve first-fifties. (For those curious, we spend the first three days looking at the first fifty pages of everyone's novel, on the theory that those pages have to be strong when they go to an editor or agent as a proposal.) Many helpful comments were offered and received, and there was a satisfying and comfortable lack of drama. Everyone here knew at least one other person prior to the workshop convening, and some of us knew a lot of the other participants. It looks to me like everyone is managing to fit in, which is good. (And we were all glad that E.C. Myers, who had the worst travel luck of any of us, finally managed to make it here late Saturday night. It was too bad that he missed dinner, though.)

Lunch yesterday was catered. We had delicious little baked burritos, spicy tomato soup, and chips and salsa. After the afternoon session, a few of us hauled our stacks of stuff still to read down to Macy's and sat around chatting as much as reading for a couple of hours. Then the whole gang convened the Zane Grey Ballroom at the Hotel Weatherford and milled about on the balcony listening to reggae from the festival down the street, and later watching police, fire, and ambulance converge on the crowd. I hope whoever had the emergency down there was okay. Also, we saw a few trucks equipped with snorkels pass by in the street below. (I wish I had one of those for my car in Chicago on Friday. The water in the depression under the Metra tracks at Foster and Ravenswood was well over my axles.)

A highlight for me at the Zane Grey was getting to meet Mike Kelly, our organizer Sarah K. Castle's husband. Mike is James Patrick Kelly's brother, and since I also (entirely coincidentally and unconnected to the science fiction world) know Dan Kelly from Brooklyn, I have now met three of the Kelly brothers. My new goal in life is to collect all four! But quite apart from his Kelly family connections, Mike is a charming and fascinating fellow in his own right, a textbook-writing geologist who also designs interactive museum installations.

Oh, and the Zane Grey also had Lagunitas IPA on draft! $2.75 a pint!

After Zane Grey, we schooled over to the Black Bean Burrito Bar & Salsa Co. for a late dinner. Then it was home, where I crashed disappointingly early. Maybe they stay up later and drink more beer over in the other house. Going to have to find that out tonight.

Okay, now I'm going to put on the 2006 FourPlay String Quartet album Now to the Future (which frogworth kindly sent me) and get another critique written.

In other news, I arrived today in Flagstaff, Arizona, to attend the Starry Heaven novel workshop! I'm here with my poor half-finished novel Technomancers, which I hope my fellow workshoppers give a swift kick in the ass. I was hoping that at 70,000 words I'd be close to finished, but as it turns out I'm only about halfway through the first draft.

But anyway, Brad Beaulieu and I ended up on the same flight from Chicago and rode together in the 90 mph shuttle van from Phoenix. Sarah Kelly picked us up with Gary Shockley and whisked us off to lunch at the Beaver Street Brewpub where we met up with Sarah Prineas, Sandra McDonald, and Greg van Eekhout and Lisa Will. A pitcher of Lumberjack Lager couldn't get to our table soon enough!

Then we checked in at our B&B, where the room Greg and I are sharing pretty much boggled our minds with its palatial dimensions. Blue Heaven will henceforth have a lot to live up to! A trip to the supermarket and our fridge is stocked, although it was pre-stocked with bagels and cream cheese and milk and OJ and coffee and syrup and the cupboard with cereal and pancake mix and stuff when we arrived.

Okay, I'm starting to gush. We hear via Twitter that Eugene Myers is having extreme travel complications, but with luck he'll be with us late this evening. I'm now drinking a Four Peaks 8th Street Ale and signing off. The week begins!