what is a "scientific procedural"?

[khedron]

I came across the term "scientific procedural" twice recently when reading reviews of books or authors. It started when I was looking up Gregory Benford, to see if it was likely that the guy who wrote a pro-Minutemen NYT editorial was the science fiction author of the same name. (It looks likely.) Wikipedia's entry for Benford has the following snippet:

His breakthrough novel may have been the time travel classic Timescape (1980), co-authored with his brother's wife Hillary Forester Benford, which won the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. A scientific procedural, the novel eventually loaned its title to a line of science fiction published by Pocket Books.

The phrase tickled; I'd heard it somewhere before, vaguely. A web search pulled up a similar use for a Connie Willis novel, _Passage_:

Connie Willis explores death and near death experiences (NDEs) in Passage, a scientific procedural set in a Denver hospital. The novel opens with the appearance of Richard Wright, an experimental doctor who is looking at what happens to the brain as death approaches.

Now, looking at both of these, it seems highly likely that "Steve H. Silver", the reviwer of the Willis novel, is the same as "Shsilver", a Wikipedia contributor. In fact, through the magic of wiki revision diffing, I can see that Shsilver was responsible for the phrase being in the entry. Even further, as far as Google can tell, all uses of this phrase can be traced back to this guy.

So! My question to y'all is, does this have legitimate meaning? Is it a phrase which makes sense? Or is it a one-man quest to add meaning to the world?

Comments

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I've never heard the term before, but I can tell what it's supposed to mean in the context of the quoted passages. It's used in analogy to "police procedural.". So, a scientific procedural story would be like a police procedural, except instead of solving a crime the characters are pursuing some scientific mystery.

I dunno if the guy made the term up himself, but it is, I think, useful for describing a certain class of stories.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

I'll buy that; it gives with the sense I'd gotten. And I strongly suspect that if you guys have never heard of it, then it hadn't existed before. =)

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I've never heard it either and wouldn't've understood what it meant had not desdenova given the analogy. I suppose it's accurate when applied to Timescape.