Narrative Physics: Teaching Special and General Relativity Through Immersive Fiction

This article argues that hard science fiction can serve as an effective pedagogical scaffold for teaching special and general relativity at the secondary and undergraduate level. Using the novel Curved Horizons as a case study, the paper demonstrates how narrative urgency, character stakes, and immersive fictional context can motivate genuine engagement with counter-intuitive physics concepts — simultaneity, time dilation, the twin paradox, gravitational time dilation, frame dragging, and the three-body problem — without sacrificing scientific accuracy. The paper presents a three-part pedagogical framework: physics introduced through narrative before formal statement, concepts motivated by story consequences rather than abstract principle, and mathematical formalism arrived at as explanation rather than starting point. Six original figures illustrate the physics directly from the novel's events. A prototype teacher's guide (56,000 words, Chapters 1–16, differentiated from middle school through Advanced Placement) and a graduate-level supplement extending the material to differential geometry and tensor analysis are available to educators on request. Currently under peer review at The Physics Teacher (AIP Publishing), Manuscript #TPT26-AR-00388.