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

[Wordmaker]

A lot of it comes down to what will be important to the story.

Say you want to tell a sci-fi story about a non-Earth world that has humans on it. The story will never feature characters leaving the planet. Therefore while the writer might want to know, for themselves, how they got there, it doesn't really matter to the story, so you can write the whole book without ever mentioning how they humans ended up there, just like a book set on modern-day Earth doesn't need to describe how humans evolved over millions of years.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Say you want to tell a sci-fi story about a non-Earth world that has humans on it. The story will never feature characters leaving the planet. Therefore while the writer might want to know, for themselves, how they got there, it doesn't really matter to the story, so you can write the whole book without ever mentioning how they humans ended up there, just like a book set on modern-day Earth doesn't need to describe how humans evolved over millions of years.

I think that all other things being equal, there should be enough in the book - not necessarily spelled out in detail, but clues enough to make it hold together - to keep it plausible for as many people as possible.  Unless you're telling a story in a particular mode where realism is not expected (such as a fairy-tale retelling), it will make for a book that breaks suspension of disbelief for fewer people to have the biology work, the physics work, the linguistics and economics work, &c.  Even if none of those affect the story directly, they create the setting in which the story unfolds and the fewer readers who are thrown out of the story by "X you say here would imply Y and Z which would interfere with W happening as you describe it" the better.

Granted, one can't do infinite research and the story has to get written at some point if it's to exist at all.  (To a first approximation, so far as I'm concerned, that means never write about guns, horses, or sailing ships; those appear to be the killer topics where no matter how much research you do you will always find readers who know as much or more, disagree with you about technical details and will be vocal online about it.)

[Wordmaker]

Absolutely, you want to alienate as few readers as possible. The danger though, is that a lot of Sci-Fi has this tendency to go into unnecessary detail about how technology works, with character discussing or thinking about advances in a way that real people just never do.

There was a short story written, and I can't for the life of me find it, where the writer describes two people in a modern setting going on a plane journey. It's funny to read, because ordinary people don't think about the aerodynamic properties of air travel, or how amazing it is that a network of satellites in orbit around the planet allows for instant communication through handheld devices, even when traveling through the sky.

So if you write a book, say a noir detective story set on a human colony, it's going to be difficult to slip in a scene where your detective thinks about how the colony was founded by a liveship that travelled for thirty years on a one-way trip from Earth, or that it's fortunate that scientists managed to figure out a way to stabilize wormholes for interstellar travel. You run the risk of taking the reader out of the story, breaking the flow in a very recognizable way to explain the setting to the reader. If the detective is investigating the death of someone related to the man who developed the technology allowing the colony to be founded, then you have a perfect way to introduce that information, but not every story needs that.

[Galvatron]

Absolutely, you want to alienate as few readers as possible. The danger though, is that a lot of Sci-Fi has this tendency to go into unnecessary detail about how technology works, with character discussing or thinking about advances in a way that real people just never do.

There was a short story written, and I can't for the life of me find it, where the writer describes two people in a modern setting going on a plane journey. It's funny to read, because ordinary people don't think about the aerodynamic properties of air travel, or how amazing it is that a network of satellites in orbit around the planet allows for instant communication through handheld devices, even when traveling through the sky.

So if you write a book, say a noir detective story set on a human colony, it's going to be difficult to slip in a scene where your detective thinks about how the colony was founded by a liveship that travelled for thirty years on a one-way trip from Earth, or that it's fortunate that scientists managed to figure out a way to stabilize wormholes for interstellar travel. You run the risk of taking the reader out of the story, breaking the flow in a very recognizable way to explain the setting to the reader. If the detective is investigating the death of someone related to the man who developed the technology allowing the colony to be founded, then you have a perfect way to introduce that information, but not every story needs that.

This is a good point, Im not a fan of having a character go into info dump mode, and there are a lot of characters in a sci fi setting that probably are not going to know the mechanics of FTL drives / space ships/ worm holes/ the history of the galaxy.

Some people will know it, but even if the character is a scientist, have them just spit out info for the sake of telling me is annoying.  Of course thats just my taste, but id rather have it worked into the story in a meaningful way

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Absolutely, you want to alienate as few readers as possible. The danger though, is that a lot of Sci-Fi has this tendency to go into unnecessary detail about how technology works, with character discussing or thinking about advances in a way that real people just never do.

Depends on the real people.  You write from the POV of a scientist or an engineer or a programmer working with a problem in their field of expertise, thinking about the technical details is pretty much true to life. (Speaking as a scientist and programmer myself.)

The trick is getting it to work. Unless you're Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams, straight infodumps are way hard to make fun to read in and of themselves; but I think genre SF and fantasy is notably highly populated with people from setting X turning up in setting Y, or young-adult protagonists just leaving their village and getting to learn how the world works, at least in part because people to whom something can legitimately in-character be explained are immensely useful and are worth having.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

This is a good point, Im not a fan of having a character go into info dump mode, and there are a lot of characters in a sci fi setting that probably are not going to know the mechanics of FTL drives / space ships/ worm holes/ the history of the galaxy.

Depends on whether the story you want to tell needs someone who plausibly knows that stuff or not; if you're writing a competent professional in their field, or a reasonably educated person within the context of the setting, for example.

Some people will know it, but even if the character is a scientist, have them just spit out info for the sake of telling me is annoying. 

Telling for the sake of telling is a character-building technique, though.

Imagine a first-person narrative being written by an explorer on a new planet.  She has an in-universe audience in mind, the people back home who are going to be reading her report.  The stuff she explains to them - the stuff she needs to explain to them - is a very powerful tool for characterising her, for characterising them, and for establishing what the setting's details are like - particularly in terms of what's obvious to her and her in-world audience but not to the real-world reader, and vice versa.  ("These people call this stuff coffee but it's flat and bitter, and worst of all, they serve it hot.") 

There are some amazing (and successful) novels doing clever things with this kind of thing - Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, for example.

[slrogers]

This is a good point, Im not a fan of having a character go into info dump mode, and there are a lot of characters in a sci fi setting that probably are not going to know the mechanics of FTL drives / space ships/ worm holes/ the history of the galaxy.

I think that probably the best way to think about it is from the character’s point of view. For example, most people use cell phones and TVs without understand the fascinating physics that makes them work.

If your main characters are developing, or working closely with, the technology then you are going to have to be very good with your physics. No one likes to find out that your Heisenberg-Raazkove innovation that allows for teleportation doesn't even have the Heisenberg side of the technology right. -- On the other hand, your characters don't have to know how it works to know that they operate the device in some way and get something cool to happen. They probably don't even care (and perhaps the reader as well) which, if any of the particles involved are violating Einstein’s relativity because of Heisenberg uncertainty. New knowledge only available in your book doesn't have to exist now, with current limited understanding of the universe. And a lot of people might not care how exactly they've overcome current understanding (or even what current understanding is).

So if you have to discuss science, make sure you get it right. But you don’t have to discuss science to write a good science-fiction.

[Galvatron]

Depends on whether the story you want to tell needs someone who plausibly knows that stuff or not; if you're writing a competent professional in their field, or a reasonably educated person within the context of the setting, for example.

Telling for the sake of telling is a character-building technique, though.

Imagine a first-person narrative being written by an explorer on a new planet.  She has an in-universe audience in mind, the people back home who are going to be reading her report.  The stuff she explains to them - the stuff she needs to explain to them - is a very powerful tool for characterising her, for characterising them, and for establishing what the setting's details are like - particularly in terms of what's obvious to her and her in-world audience but not to the real-world reader, and vice versa.  ("These people call this stuff coffee but it's flat and bitter, and worst of all, they serve it hot.") 

There are some amazing (and successful) novels doing clever things with this kind of thing - Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, for example.

I agree, but the trouble I see, or more the thing that really grinds my gears are when the obersvations dont fit the character.

Say the character is not educated, maybe instead of a scientist its a gunslinger, the types of obersvations the charcter would be related to an in universe audience should be different.

When the character should be looking for possible ambush points, but is instead telling me about the history of an ancient alien race or talking about how a ships FTL drive works (unless the character has been shown to have an undestanding of this type of thing) comes off as more of an info dump.

So I suppose what I am getting at is whats be related to me as the reader should make sense from the point of view I am getting it from, and it makes no sense that the on screne character would know or notice a certain thing Id rather find out about that information later and in a way that fits the narritive better.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I agree, but the trouble I see, or more the thing that really grinds my gears are when the obersvations dont fit the character.

Say the character is not educated, maybe instead of a scientist its a gunslinger, the types of obersvations the charcter would be related to an in universe audience should be different.

When the character should be looking for possible ambush points, but is instead telling me about the history of an ancient alien race or talking about how a ships FTL drive works (unless the character has been shown to have an undestanding of this type of thing) comes off as more of an info dump.

So I suppose what I am getting at is whats be related to me as the reader should make sense from the point of view I am getting it from, and it makes no sense that the on screne character would know or notice a certain thing Id rather find out about that information later and in a way that fits the narritive better.

No argument with any of that.

I think the way it can sometimes fail for even good writers is "I absolutely need the reader to know bit of world-mechanic X in order for the events of chapter 25 to make sense, because readers not understanding what's going on is bad, and I am going to shove it into a quiet moment in chapter 10 because i can't find a better place for it."

[Wordmaker]

Telling for the sake of telling is a character-building technique, though.

Telling anything for the sake of telling is going to feel like you couldn't find a way to make it fit naturally into the story. Just like you shouldn't introduce a character then spend a paragraph describing their entire appearance in detail, you don't want to blow all your setting detail in one go.

Imagine a first-person narrative being written by an explorer on a new planet.  She has an in-universe audience in mind, the people back home who are going to be reading her report.  The stuff she explains to them - the stuff she needs to explain to them - is a very powerful tool for characterising her, for characterising them, and for establishing what the setting's details are like - particularly in terms of what's obvious to her and her in-world audience but not to the real-world reader, and vice versa.  ("These people call this stuff coffee but it's flat and bitter, and worst of all, they serve it hot.")

Perfect! Right there is a character who is likely to be thinking about the specifics of FTL and the technology at her disposal compared to the world she's exploring. That's exactly the kind of thing you want to use if you want to make technology details a major part of your book.

[Sully]

I don't think things necessarily have to be explained.  I've been reading a lot of Elizabeth Moon recently, so I'll use her as an example.  In her Vatta's War series, the mechanics of FTL are never even hinted at.  They aren't the story, and have nothing to do with setting or character development-it's enough that it exists.  Communication is the story.  The 'how' for that isn't explained either.  The story rests in the chaos of disrupted communication.  And it works.

In Heinlein's 'Time for the Stars', I don't think the technology is ever explained either.  But the time dilation from traveling at relativistic speeds, and those effects IS, because that is actually plot relevant.  The engineering is not.

Granted, one can't do infinite research and the story has to get written at some point if it's to exist at all.  (To a first approximation, so far as I'm concerned, that means never write about guns, horses, or sailing ships; those appear to be the killer topics where no matter how much research you do you will always find readers who know as much or more, disagree with you about technical details and will be vocal online about it.)

Don't forget fencing and other martial arts.

Depends on the real people.  You write from the POV of a scientist or an engineer or a programmer working with a problem in their field of expertise, thinking about the technical details is pretty much true to life. (Speaking as a scientist and programmer myself.)

If you're writing from those perspectives and delving into their professional knowledge, I suspect you're probably limiting your potential audience just a tad.   That would be a hard book to pull off.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

If you're writing from those perspectives and delving into their professional knowledge, I suspect you're probably limiting your potential audience just a tad.  

Well, granted that there's no choice a writer can make that won't appeal to some readers and turn others off, I don't actually think so; lots of people read to enjoy getting inside the head of people with different competences than the reader has and have it make sense to them,  Or at least to get a plausible illusion of that, be it as well backed with solid geekiness as Neal Stephenson or as superficial as Dan Brown.

That would be a hard book to pull off.

And yet people who do that sort of thing make bestseller lists.

[Wordmaker]

And yet people who do that sort of thing make bestseller lists.

Because the people who can do that sort of thing and still make it accessible to a broad audience are really, really good at what they do! 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Because the people who can do that sort of thing and still make it accessible to a broad audience are really, really good at what they do! 

Granted, but what would be the point in aiming to be less than really really good ?

[Wordmaker]

Find the style that suits you best. If it happens to be similar to another author, that's fine. But don't get hung up on emulating the ones who've made it to the big time. It's your voice readers will want to hear, with engaging characters and a captivating story. Everything else is gravy.