Starman: Gentry Lee, Man of Science and Science Fiction

Thanks to Gentry Lee, I passed high school physics. Working with his friend and colleague Carl Sagan, Lee developed and produced the popular science series Cosmos. Our teacher gave us extra credit for each episode we watched after class, so I’ve probably seen every episode at least three times. Fortunately, it was good show. Lee also contributed to other scientific accomplishments, including the Viking Mars probes and the Voyager program. Lee takes stock of his accomplished career in Robert Stone’s documentary Starman, which releases in theaters this Friday.

Baseball always fascinated Lee, partly because of its statistics. He even calculated players’ batting averages before the newspapers did, which is how his mathematical talent was initially discovered. It wasn’t exactly a straight line from there to NASA’s JPL, but he got there nonetheless.

Probably Viking was his biggest project, but he still has a hand in just about all of JPL’s ongoing projects. Of course, NASA considered it an incredible feat, but the press lost interest when it failed to produce irrefutable proof of life on Mars. For obvious reasons, Lee and Sagan were frustrated by the media’s poor grasp of science and their general shallowness, so they conceived Cosmos as a way to popularize breakthrough discoveries in astronomy.

In addition, Lee also collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke, writing several novels “together.” Frankly, Lee openly admits he did the writing, while Clarke did the “editing.” Of course, Clarke would have also had his own editor at his publishing house, to do all real editorial heavy-lifting, but the opportunity to work with Clarke was too enticing to pass up. In fact, Lee eventually wrote two solo stand-alone novels in Clarke’s Rama universe.

Regardless, one of the appealing things about Stone’s film is the enthusiasm Lee expresses for science, science fiction, and baseball. He is Stone’s sole sit-down interview, but he is more than sufficient—and sadly most of the other relevant voices, like Clarke, Sagan, fellow NASA scientist Frank Drake, and sf writer Ray Bradbury, have all left us. Still, all are present in archival footage. Indeed, science fiction luminaries like Bradbury and Gene Roddenberry help Lee and Stone link science fiction to real world scientific advance, as a source of inspiration and a means of expanding our conception of the possible.

It is pretty amazing to see Lee still shaping the future of space exploration at JPL. Throughout the film, Lee also raises interesting philosophical questions about the possibilities of life on other planets and hypothesizes to explain why they have yet to interact—at least as far as we know.

Clearly, Stone is a good fit to profile Lee, considering the science-based subject matter of his previous documentaries, particularly Pandora’s Promise, which made a convincing case nuclear power represents the only truly safe, reliable, and cost-effective form of green energy. He also incorporates some cool astronomical designs and effects created by John Leamy. It is the kind of film that can rekindle some lost enthusiasm for the American space program, which has been sorely neglected by shortsighted politicians. Highly recommended, Starman opens Friday (2/6) in New York at the IFC Center (with a special preview screening scheduled Wednesday 1/4, with Lee and Stone).