Unlike my friend and fellow Highlarkist Goodchild, I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan. I was pleasantly surprised and jealous as hell when my brother-in-law told me he sat right behind Nolan at the New York premiere of the movie Interstellar. The reason being that he was the editor of The Science Of Interstellar, a book published by W.W.Norton explaining exactly that. I loved the movie and so took immediate interest in the book although I’m not much of a book reader to be honest. The book is written by Kip Thorne, a scientist and really the founding father of Interstellar.
The book begins with the story of how Kip’s friend Lynda Obst, an established Hollywood producer approached him to help her on a science based movie idea she had in mind. The vision of this project was to create a “Blockbuster movie grounded from the outset in real science.” I enjoyed this part of the book the most actually, as it goes on to talk about the 9 years it took for this vision to become a reality. From gaining Steven Spielberg as the initial director and then losing him, to all of the bumps in between until it finally landed in the hands of Christopher Nolan.
The “real” part of the book begins by explaining the basic scientific principles presented in the movie such as the solar system, various force fields and general laws that control the universe. Once Kip finishes explaining the foundation, the book breaks down into specific events in the movie followed by the scientific explanation. The honest truth is that in space there are many things that are yet to be proved as a 100% accurate. Kip marks each segment with a symbol that represents Truth, Speculation and Educated Guess. The cool thing is, as they stated in the beginning, Interstellar was deeply rooted in science and hence entirely plausible.
The book does go pretty deep into science, but if you are a fan of the movie or just into science, I would check this out for sure.
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