Science-Fiction: How 'real' must a technology be?

[Demos Mirak]

Hello guys, here I am again. This time the question is: 'How 'real' must a technology be?'
Because for the last few days I have been thinking up and discarding various ways for instant (FTL) communication between two points, ranging from quantum entanglement to small traversable wormholes, reading up on them and concluding that they were all impossible. Right now I devised my own way of making things possible, by thinking up a completely new way of going about it. So that issue is no more, but I fear that due to my need to get things right I will encounter similar things later on. So, should I keep trying new things if old things turn out to be impossible, or should I just flip off quantum physics and go my own way?

[Wordmaker]

I brought up a similar point for discussion on my blog the other day, on how much scientific knowledge an author needs in order to write sci-fi.

Personally, until a method of FTL travel is actually verified as possible and practical, any kind of FTL is essentially going to be either wrong or border on magic. What I mean is, don't get too hung up on it. Write your story first, and worry about the technology second. If you want to avoid being wrong, use a completely fictional method for space travel and communication. Maybe quantum entanglement is proven to work in your setting, or there's a neighbouring dimension close to ours where the laws of physics are different and people can piggyback communications and space travel on rifts between that dimension and ours.

[Galvatron]

In most science fiction there is going to be at least a little hand waving going on.  Thats ok.

I think alot of it depends on what methods or how real you want things to be

Just an example, look at the Battlestar Galactica series (the reboot) they use an FTL drive but never go into great detail on how it works.  You know its there, but they dont tell you how it works or what the science behind it is, and thats ok.  Its just a way to get from A to B, and of cousre when the FTL drive is on the fritz you get added drama.

On another note, if you look at the warhammer 40k universe, traveling through the wrap (and what lives in the warp) is a pretty big deal, and there is a bit more explanation about how it all works.  Of course, the entire system is made up for that setting so making up the details is perfectly ok.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I think what matters most is consistency within your story.

There are excellent and successful SF novels at every level of realism from diamond-hard "this could all be done today" science to wildly speculative. Be clear on what you want to do, and think through the consequences of the bits you are making up; you can get a lot of plausibility out of carefully thinking through the social and economic impact of a made-up technology even if it's a totally implausible one.

I will beg to disagree with Wordmaker on the "story first, technology later" point, because to a large extent, available tech defines the kind of stories you can tell.  Novels written and set in Britain at periods when the fastest ways of getting around were by horseback have different dynamics to ones after the introduction of railways.  Golden age mysteries where determining whether the mysterious returned person is really the baby who went missing decades ago don't work in settings where DNA tests are trivial.  An awful lot of 50s/60s/70s thriller plots totally fail if you set them at a more recent point in time where most people will have cellphones, and so on.  It's certainly worth thinking in terms of what sort of tech setting will best enable the kind of story you want to tell (witness any number of successful military SF/space opera settings where the FTL and related tech have been very carefully contrived to generate battles that feel like Napoleonic-era naval engagements), but I am inclined to think that in general you get more interesting and innovative SF by thinking through the consequences of tech and what new stories they enable.

[Wordmaker]

A fair point, but I'd argue that those are really just set-dressings for the overall story.

If the story is "how do we get to our destination in time?" then if your characters travel by horse you use a different obstacle (treacherous countryside and bandits) than you would use if they can travel by rail (the next bridge has been sabotaged). The overall story and goal remains the same. The details are what changes.

[Galvatron]

I agree with what Neuro is saying, to me, either writing or reading, the most intersting part of science fiction is the impact the tech has on the world/universe and the people in it, not so much how it works.

Also just because something is set in space doesnt mean it has to be super sciencey, just look at Star Wars.  Most of the tech in that universe has been around for a long time, its just part of that universe.  Heck you even get some magic thrown in.  Its not hard or real science fiction by any means, but its awesome =)

So for your example about communication, think of what your setting would be like without FTL communication.  To me it brings up images of a pre telegraph western setting, when letters had to be delivered and sending a message and getting a response could take days or weeks or even longer depending on how far that message has to travel.

That has a large effect on things like deploying military forces across a large region, tracking/catching criminals, the way planets communicate with each other.

All of those things change if you have FTL communication, its a minor detail that totaly changes the way tons of things work.

Either of them can be done well, but take some time to think of the effects of your tech choices and what kind of story you want to tell before hand.

[Galvatron]

A fair point, but I'd argue that those are really just set-dressings for the overall story.

If the story is "how do we get to our destination in time?" then if your characters travel by horse you use a different obstacle (treacherous countryside and bandits) than you would use if they can travel by rail (the next bridge has been sabotaged). The overall story and goal remains the same. The details are what changes.

Sort of, but to me its more than that.  How people and goods got from A to B changed quite a bit when trains came around.  In the American west, having the ability to ride a train across the country made a huge differnce from having to cross in wagons or sail around.

It had an impact on the economy, on the settlers, on the natives, it was a pretty big deal and changed the dynamics in America quite a bit.

Now I agree in a sense that it is dressing, but the dressing is going to have impact on how you build your world, and because of that, I think you should plan it out ahead of time.  For example if you want pirates but you are going to use FTL commincation and FTL travel and have a big government in the area, things like pirating become much harder to do.

Also when you are traveling in the vastness of space it becomes a somewhat bigger deal to me than when you are traveling around one planet.  Just my two cents

[Wordmaker]

Absolutely. What I mean is that you can keep your overall story, the concept, the same, regardless of tech level.

Star Wars is about a young farmboy who joins the rebellion against an evil empire, where he discovers his hidden heritage and destiny while saving the rebels from a terrible weapon. The details that make up the story change, but you can put that concept into any setting and it'll still be worth reading.

[Galvatron]

Very true, I just think its important to do a bit of planning so you dont end up making it hard to include things you wanted to do because the tech in your setting would make it silly or impossible.

Now as far as Star Wars goes, think about what it would be like if you take away the FTL ability or hyperdrives.

The amount of locations the characters can reach goes way down, infact it would become pretty darn hard for the Rebels to ever get far enough away from the forces of the Empire to be able to stage and equip an army, or even just avoid being killed.  And unless you are going to use a worm hole or some other method to cover the emense distance between solar systems you wouldnt be having a Galactic Empire, you'd have a more system based govenrment like the Alliance in FireFly, or the 12 Colonies of Battlestar.

The fewer systems you have in your story the less alien speices you will end up with.

You could take the hyperdrive out of Star Wars and still tell the same story, but the setting would be entirely different, and you might not have any Wookies, and thats a pretty big change over all.

Not saying there is a right/wrong way to do it, just know what you want in your story and make sure you tech supports those things.

[Wordmaker]

I agree completely. And sometimes, taking your existing idea then taking away a particular piece of technology can give you all kinds of ideas.

I mean, there's enough amazing steampunk Star Wars art out there to make me really want to see that happen!

But this is getting side-tracked from the OP.

[Galvatron]

Very very true lol

I think being consitent is as much a factor as any.  No one claims Star Wars to be hard science fiction, the tech helps make the setting the story is told in possible and fun and adds a smidge of wonder, though some of that is as much magic as tech.  Space is simply the setting.

Now the Forever War is on the other end, much of the story comes from the side effects of traveling the stars, its kind of the key point to the entire story.  In this one, space and how its traveled becomes the key plot device.

Each works.  But you couldnt bounce back and forth between the two, going from hard to soft and back and forth can really muck up a good science fiction story.

And of cousre there is nothing wrong with Space Fantasy, Warhammer 40k and Star Wars are two of my favorite and as far as my opinion goes, they are both fantasy stories in a space setting.

I do like the idea o taking away a piece of tech in a story, for example, having the Gellar Drive fail mid warp travel in the Warhammer 40k Universe creates all sorts problems for the characters to deal with =)

[Wordmaker]

I definitely think if I ever dipped my foot into sci-fi (as I hope to do) I'd aim for space opera and space fantasy primarily. My aptitude for science isn't great, and I'd hate to do a disservice to the hard science fiction authors whose steps I'd be following in if I messed it up.

[trboturtle]

In the Battletech universe, FTL is handled by using JumpShips, which can "Jump" up to thirty LYs at a time, then have to spend about a week or so recharging the jump drive by using a solar sail. The Jump drive tears a hole in hyperspace and the jumpship goes through the hole to plotted system

If the JumpShip has a LF battery system, it can make two thirty-LYs jumps before recharging. Dravel from the jump points to the planets are handled by DropShips, smaller ships that dock with the JumpShip.

FTL communications are done with Hyper-pulse Generators (HPGs) on each planet. They tear a hole in hyperspace and can send messages up to 50 LYs to the next HPG station. RT point to point communications across hundreds of LYs is possible, but only major interstellar states can afford the cost and not on a regular basis.

There is enough background on the technology to make it plausable without getting too bogged down on detail....

Craig

[Demos Mirak]

Thanks for all the replies, and I'm trying to go for hard science fiction, but since the only science I'm good at is biology, and not physics or mathematics, it will probably end up softer than what I had set out for. But there's no harm in trying.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Absolutely. What I mean is that you can keep your overall story, the concept, the same, regardless of tech level.

And this is what I am disagreeing with. You can't tell the same shape of thrillers where everyone has cellphones as you can in the 1950s because the plausible dynamics of information flow within the setting are completely different.

On the other hand, Greg Egan has written some stories that only work in the technological milieu he has created for them.  "Learning to be Me", for example, is in a setting where people have computerised "jewels" in their heads recording their personalities for backup and potential immortality, and deals with a man who is starting to worry that his jewel has come out of synch with his brain and is not actually recording him after all, but that he'll never be able to prove it.

Star Wars is about a young farmboy who joins the rebellion against an evil empire, where he discovers his hidden heritage and destiny while saving the rebels from a terrible weapon. The details that make up the story change, but you can put that concept into any setting and it'll still be worth reading.

You're going to have a great deal of difficulty making me believe in that story set in an any more than halfway competent panopticon-surveillance dictatorship with tech fifty or a hundred years ahead of our own (the Judge Dredd comicverse, for example) because if you want one person with no special skills to make a difference, or to survive long enough to acquire the skills, you will need some other factors to explain why the surveillance etc hasn't caught these rebels very early on while they are still figuring out how to do their rebel thing.

Not that you can't put the other factors in; just that if you do, it's no longer the same story.