This story originally appeared in the December issue of Discover magazine as "Science...or Just Fiction?" Support our science journalism by becoming a subscriber.
When physicist and author Stephen Webb was a kid in the 1960s, humans were finally reaching beyond Earth. Satellites orbited the planet. Rockets blasted people into space. Astronauts walked on the moon. And in the distance, Mars, with its red soil and hints of ancient water, titillated imaginations and beckoned Earthlings onward.
“I grew up — I guess you’d say — in a science fictional world,” says Webb, a bald British man whose alternately arched and furrowed eyebrows can tell a story of excitement and confusion almost as well as words do.
During that same childhood period, he was immersing himself in actual science fiction, in addition to this nonfictional reality that was so cool it seemed fake. He devoured books by canonical authors like Robert Heinlein ...
