快猫短视频 Book Club has been reading Alex Foster’s debut novel, Circular Motion, in which he charts what would happen if Earth’s rotation sped up by not just a millisecond, but a minute, or an hour, or 12 hours. What if it started spinning so fast that we could feel it? This week, our culture editor Alison Flood caught up with Foster to delve into his writing process and background in maths and economics, while discussing the book’s themes of crisis, moral dilemmas and the ongoing nature of the transformation of the world, rather than its definitive end.

Read more: What would it feel like to be on a planet spinning out of control?

In his sci-fi novel Lake of Darkness, Adam Roberts set out to write a utopia, a genre predating science fiction that imagines a better or perfect world. “I wanted to investigate the logic of utopia itself. Is utopia possible?” he says. Despite this, he admits that utopia novels are hard: “There can be, by definition, no conflict in the perfect realm.” In this interview with 快猫短视频 Book Club head Alison Flood, Roberts discusses the novel, his quest to understand utopia itself and why he could have called the novel Space Satan听颈苍蝉迟别补诲.

快猫短视频 Book Club has been reading Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, a tale of a young woman who must help a naval officer snatched from death in 1847 adapt to the 21st century. This week, our culture editor Alison Flood caught up with Bradley to delve into the inspiration and process behind her time-travelling, romantic thriller. From the humour and technicalities of time travel to the social commentary likening time travellers to refugees in the UK today, Bradley gives an amazing insight into her best-selling novel.

Read more: We now know who was cannibalised on the doomed Franklin expedition

Space is a favourite setting for many Hollywood films, but just how accurate are their portrayals? Patricia Skelton, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, sheds some light on the scientific rigour of her favourite movies.

For example, during an explosive space battle scene in Star Trek, a crew member is tossed out into space and suddenly into silence. For Skelton, this moment accurately portrays physics: space is an almost perfect vacuum, and sound can鈥檛 travel without a medium.

Apollo 13 tells the story of NASA鈥檚 ill-fated 1970 lunar mission. What stands out for Skelton is how the film-makers tackled the challenge of portraying zero gravity by using NASA鈥檚 KC-135 aeroplane, affectionately known as the “Vomit Comet”. By flying in parabolic arcs, the jet creates brief moments of weightlessness, just long enough to film scenes in realistic zero gravity.

In the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader meets with the Emperor Palpatine via hologram. Despite being vast galactic distances apart, their conversation flows surprisingly well, without any communication delay. In reality, that would be impossible, says Skelton. To illustrate this, she uses the example of Voyager 1, a space probe that is currently the most distant human-made object from Earth. Communicating with it involves sending radio signals, which are electromagnetic waves that travel at 300,000 kilometres per second. Since Voyager 1 is 24 billion kilometres away, a message sent today takes about 22.5 hours to arrive. Real-time chats across galaxies may not be possible, but a little creative licence is all part of the magic of sci-fi.

Dinosaurs have been stars in Hollywood since the earliest days of cinema, captivating audiences throughout. But just how accurate are these portrayals, especially given what we now understand about dinosaur physiology and behaviour?

Palaeontologist is a big fan of dinosaur films, particularly those created using stop-motion animation techniques. Despite the limited scientific knowledge about dinosaurs in the earlier days of cinema, many films of that era surprisingly got some details right.

Take King Kong, the 1933 movie packed with prehistoric creatures, including a Stegosaurus, a relatively new discovery back then. While oversized and mistakenly depicted with four rows of tail spikes instead of two, its design was impressively faithful to scientific research of the era, says Hone, suggesting the film-makers referenced real palaeontological papers. The film鈥檚 iconic Tyrannosaurus rex is another example: while its posture was too upright given what we now know, its size was spot on.

Fast-forward to 2001鈥檚 Jurassic Park III, Hone鈥檚 favourite of the franchise. With CGI in full force, the film introduced a wider variety of dinosaurs as well as impressively lifelike pteranodons. Their size and movements, especially how they take flight, are remarkably accurate.