SOURCE: Sawyer, Andy. “Narrativium and Lies-to-Children: ‘Palatable Instruction’ in The Science of Discworld.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 13, no. 1 (2002): 62-81.

In the following essay, Sawyer explores the collaboration of science writers Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart with Pratchett in The Science of Discworld, arguing that the fields of science and science fiction only serve to strengthen one another.

Hugo Gernsback made no bones about claiming science fiction as instructive. His propagandizing editorials form the backbone of Gary Westfahl's defense of Gernsbackian science fiction in The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (1998). “If every man, woman, boy or girl,” says Gernsback, “could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standards of its people would be raised tremendously” (Science Wonder Stories 1, 1061; qtd. in Westfahl Mechanics 54). Could it...