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John Moores and Jesse Rogerson five way interviews

John Moores (right) served as the Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency from 2022-2024 and held the York Research Chair in Space Exploration at York University from 2019-2024. He is an author of nearly 100 academic papers in planetary science and has been a member of the science and operations teams of several space missions, including the Curiosity Rover Mission. Jesse Rogerson is Assistant Professor at York University. He has over 15 years working in some of Canada's premier museums and science centres, including the Ontario Science Centre and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Their book is Daydreaming in the Solar System.

JOHN MOORES

Why science?

For Jesse and I, our passion is science and we love to share what we’ve discovered and learned about our universe with others. Our book is simply another way of doing this in a different medium.

Why the combination of fiction and popular science?

We were looking to create something which married the best of both genres: the engrossing engagement of science fiction with the precision and accuracy of science fact. We had both read science fiction that made you feel like you were part of the story, but where the description of a planetary environment might not have been quite right. Meanwhile, while science writing can be engaging, its main purpose is to inform. Instead we wanted something that would both introduce the audience to planetary science and that might, if we got it right, also evoke a feeling of excitement and awe. 

The role of SF is not to predict the future - inevitably some of the fiction parts won’t reflect reality - which do you think of your story settings has the most potential for being very different, and why?

You’re absolutely right – science fiction has always had more to say about the present and the hopes and fears of those alive at the moment of writing than prophesizing what has yet to come. We hope that our stories are somewhat robust to many possible futures because we focus on the experience of a single narrator in the wild places of each environment we explore. In this way, the exploration we depict is intended to be more personal, more like the first time that person is hiking in an established national park than someone going to a place never before seen by human eyes.

Given this framing, where we are likely to err in specifics are in the cases where we describe human habits and habitats that are required to enable some of our stories. These include the scientific installations we depict on the Moon, Europa and in orbit around Jupiter or the balloon festival in the clouds of Venus. There is no reason to expect that this is how human expansion to these places will proceed. 

For the stories that are situated primarily in the wild, a key question is: to what extent will these environments be altered by a significant human presence as compared to their current state? Of course, the opposite is also possible – that we may never choose to visit the planets in person and therefore there will be no narrators able to share the stories of those places with the rest of us. 

What’s next?

Jesse and I both have individual projects that we are working on, but we’ve also talked about pushing out the boundaries of the current book with a sequel if this volume connects with an audience. Jesse and his partner are also eagerly awaiting the birth of their second child!

What’s exciting you at the moment?

I’m very excited about the recent launch of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. This probe should be able to answer the question of how thick the ice shell is on this Jovian moon. Clipper might even be able to figure out what’s dissolved in that subglacial ocean and whether it could support life! But we have to wait – the spacecraft won’t arrive until 2030.

 

JESSE ROGERSON

Why science?

Why do I engage with Science? Because I'm curious! I think John, Michelle, and I all share that curiosity for the natural world, and engaging with it in different ways. Science, at its heart, is just a really rigorous and planned way of finding things out about the universe. I think we can all related to that desire to learn more, to turn over the rock, to the top of a hill, to dive down to the bottom of a lake. It's built-in to the human experience.

Why the combination of fiction and popular science?

Humans are storytellers. It's another naturally built-in part of being human. We express ideas, feelings, thoughts and interests to each other through stories. Even scientists do this when we present our findings in publication or at conferences. We try to build a narrative or a picture of what experiments we did, why we did them, and what results we got. It honestly feels very natural to bring popular science fully into the realm of story through carefully constructed narratives that focus on the human experience within an environment that is based on and driven by the knowledge we have of those places.  

The role of SF is not to predict the future - inevitably some of the fiction parts won’t reflect reality - which do you think of your story settings has the most potential for being very different, and why? 

This is a really great question. I agree, the goal is not to predict the future because science fiction is a way of reflecting on our current knowledge, and the intersections of science and society. Within our book, we looked at how humanity might interact with these exotic locations through various activities: golfing, sailing, skydiving, spelunking, etc. And while these activities are perfectly possible as we describe, not all may come to pass in our solar system. Will people actually want to go and walk around the entire planet Mercury? Maybe. What's the value in mapping caves on Hyperion? We may not know yet. There are so many varied story settings in our book, it's hard to say which has the most potential for being different.

What’s next?

The Solar System is just the tip of the iceberg here, there are so many more environments beyond that humans may one day explore. Exoplanets, nebulae, pulsars, and more. Building off this book, we are interested in developing more stories that reflect humanity in the Milky Way. 

What’s exciting you at the moment?

I think one of the most exciting things to happen to science in the last 20 years is the shrinking divide between scientists, the scientific method, and the greater public/non-scientist community. Data is public and platforms exist for anyone to get involved in the scientific process. From a space perspective, this is amplified by the shrinking costs in tech (telescopes/computers), and the growth of online communities, clubs, museums, and other types of organization. If you want to get involved in science, you can! You can collect data, you can shape the very questions that are asked, you can even be part of publication and presentation. And that's really cool.

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