How I Stopped Worrying (about science accuracy) And Learned to Love The Story

Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has worked in TV and film quite a bit, often as a science consultant, and sometimes as a "personality." But even before that he was a blogger -and a critic.

Not long after creating my first website (back in the Dark Internet Ages of 1997) I decided it would be fun to critique the science of movies, and I dove in with both glee and fervor. No movie was safe, from Armageddon to Austin Powers.

I was right; it was fun. It was surprisingly easy to deconstruct Hollywood accuracy, or lack thereof. Any mistake was fair game; a flubbed line with bad math was just as likely for me to mock as a plot device upon which the entire movie rested. Blowing up a giant asteroid? Pshaw. Saying “million” instead of “billion”? Please. Shadows moving the wrong way at sunset? Let me sharpen my poison keyboard.

Phil wrote a guest post for The Science and Entertainment Exchange about how he eventually reconciled the differences in the world of science and the business of entertainment. But he still wants to bring better science to your science fiction! Link -via Bad Astronomy