Sci-Fi & The Importance Of Scientific Accuracy?

Discussion in 'Science Fiction' started by Gilganjun, Mar 31, 2016.

  1. Justin Phillips

    Justin Phillips Active Member

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    I think if your MC is a regular joe that doesn't know a lot of Tech stuff, you can simply get away with just making everything plausible. Especially if the narrator follows the MC really closely. So you can have all this neat stuff going on around him but not have to explain everything. Am I right? Because I am going through the same thing. Just started a sci-fi novel. I guess the explanations would get even less important if its in first person narrative, just have a smart character explain some of the stuff that is important to the story.
     
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  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Just don't fall prey to authorial intrusion of the bad kind. Two different sorts come to mind this scenario. I agree wholeheartedly that a Regular Joe MC should not know everything there is to know about everything. That's one kind of authorial intrusion. Star Trek: TNG and later series were horrible about this. Everyone in the Federation knows how to fix a plasma conduit gone out of phase. The engineering crew, you, me, the dog groomer. Everyone. Sheesh. :wtf:

    Another kind is to have someone step out of nowhere and just blab some Infodumpenation at the MC. I think it's actually perfectly fine for the MC not to know how things work. I don't know how a jet engine actually works. I'm fine. It hasn't hindered me. :-D
     
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  3. doggiedude

    doggiedude Contributor Contributor

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    I have plenty of sci-fi type tech in my WIP, details are given when I can MAKE IT SOUND possible. I couldn't care less if there are people out there that would take one look at one of my devices and laugh at the ridiculousness of it, 99% of the readers will gloss over the info and just accept it as possible. For other things, I'll come right out and say that the ship captain has no clue what happened to the AI software. He's not a programmer, he's gonna call the help desk and tell them to fix it.
     
  4. Justin Phillips

    Justin Phillips Active Member

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    Yeah I should have worded it: " just make a smart character explain some of the stuff without an info dump." But I do believe there are smart ways to have the info relayed to you that isn't an info dump, but it has to fit in organically with the story.
     
  5. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    My favorite exposition of all time is Old Man's War by John Scalzi.

    Chapter 2 explains that a) there was a nuclear war between America versus India within recent memory and b) the reader is not going to get a scientific explanation for how the Space Elevator works ;) and a later chapter explains that the military does not take interspecies stereotyping lightly. Both of which were flawlessly woven into the character narratives.
     
  6. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    My science is computer science (it's the only one I ever studied) but with movies and TV shows showing all the cockamamie things computers can do, being accurate with computer science within a story not only isn't (apparently) necessary, it's a big excuse to reject a story. The only novel I've ever read where the computer science was even close to being real (as in 'real world') was Jurassic Park. But that accuracy didn't survive into the film—thank you, Mr. Spielberg.

    Even the terminology used by characters is so far from accurate, it's obvious to me that no one ever did research. They just went with whatever had become Internet vernacular which any UNIX programmer will tell you is laughable. But audiences don't know any better and don't care.

    Now that I've had my rant...

    In so-called hard science fiction, technical accuracy isn't as important as sounding technically accurate and extrapolating from known and accepted scientific theories. If you're writing hard science fiction, know your stuff and talk to scientists who can help you envision 'what comes after' what we already have.

    But if you're writing soft science fiction (ie. everything you see on TV or in the movies) you can get away with not being all that accurate. Even in novels, no one seems to care much... except Andy Weir... and @MikeyC. :)

    And then there's absurdist science fiction (my very own genre) where science is the least of my worries. It's there, but only symbolically. And hopefully, the humour makes up for that lack.

    Ever heard of string theory? Of course, you have because you've watched at least one episode of The Big Bang Theory where second-stringer (no pun intended) Sheldon Cooper only gave up on it a couple of years ago. In a nutshell, string theory—interwoven with the multi-verse theory—says that any set of physical laws can exist depending on the universe you're looking at. I've been working on a story (not my current WIP) which brought up concerns in this regard, not because I care all that much about scientific accuracy, but because I don't want to be laughed out of the room when I do finally get around to presenting it to the world.

    And string theory's multi-verse with its endless possibilities for expression of physical laws came to my rescue. I can now write my silly story without fear.

    For this, I refer you to a quote (don't know who said it and I paraphrase): every good lie incorporates a grain of truth. Put enough real-sounding stuff in there and people will either accept the lie (imaginary element) or simply won't notice it at all.

    And if you read the old masters and their advice on writing science fiction, they'll tell you that every science fiction story is about the characters. The science is there to give them challenges to face.

    More specifically, every time travel story is a love story. If it's not, it's never all that satisfying. There has to be at least a hint of unrequited love to make a time travel story work.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2016
  7. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    I'm with you, @Wreybies.

    For that whole tech porn thing, I think we can point the finger directly at Tom Clancy... maybe Clive Cussler, too, but Clancy started it all with Hunt for Red October before it spilled over into science fiction in general.

    And speaking of... it seems the most often bought novels at airports (for men reading on a plane) is tech porn. Why anyone would want to get on a plane (the very idea scares the crap out of me) and then read about technology that can kill??? Well, it's beyond my comprehension.

    I don't remember what genre women buy under those circumstances.
     
  8. Justin Phillips

    Justin Phillips Active Member

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    Does anyone think The Martian gets a pass for all the tech porn, because of the good story behind it? (assuming one thinks it's a good story. )
     
  9. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    It's based on watching changes in brightness of a star over time, sort of mini-eclipses of the star, you might say. It's the best system they have based on what we know. It could still be wrong, though. Nothing tests science more stringently than time and a few decades from now, this approach might be considered bad science.
     
  10. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    You're right.

    For instance, if a large planet (similar to Jupiter) is in geostationary orbit around it's star and just happens to be between us and that star, we won't see the star and therefore won't see its changes in brightness (see my previous post) that would tell us about the existence of any habitable planet around that star.
     
  11. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I only saw the film, but the human story there overrides all the tech, for me. It doesn't become tech-porn for me because of the presence of a lot of tech. It becomes tech-porn for me when the tech is the reason the story is being told.

    Pacific Rim: total, hardcore, bareback tech-porn

    The original Alien takes place in a spaceship and there's nothing but tech all around, but it's NOT tech-porn.
     
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  12. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    I read the novel after watching the film (always the best way, IMHO, because it's hard to be let down by the film if you haven't read the novel already) and the novel does get a bit thick into the tech, but I don't think it really constitutes tech porn, per se, because Andy Weir doesn't wave the tech around like he's trying to prove he's got the biggest dick on the planet... even though, technically, he does.
     
  13. Justin Phillips

    Justin Phillips Active Member

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    oh lordy
     
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  14. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Pacific Rim was about giant robots punching giant monsters, with the loosest possible explanation for why that would happen. I don't see what is "tech-porn" about that at all.
     
  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    You just described it yourself. Giant robots punching giant monsters with the loosest possible explanation for why that would happen. That is tech-porn. Perhaps you're reading my use of the word porn to mean sex porn. No. There are lots and lots of kinds of porn. Sex porn is just one kind.
     
  16. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    You misunderstand my misunderstanding. I thought you were calling all "hard" science fiction tech porn. The stuff with a hundred different weapon yields in joules, and a detailed description of the workings of the air recombination system.
     
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  17. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Well, for my personal tastes that definitely sounds like techy bow-chica-wow-wow. If I have to wade through too much tachnobabble to get to the actual story, I'm usually tapping out pretty quick.

    ETA: This kind of writing doesn't appeal to me for the same reason that Fantasy that goes overboard and masturbatory as to world-building in the story doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to read a Fantasy story that's just a repackaged version of the writer's painstakingly crafted world-building notebook.
     
  18. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    That, I believe, is an apt description of tech porn. Well said. It's like... one step beyond hard science fiction.
     
  19. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    But I see this as the opposite end of the spectrum from Pacific Rim, whose whole purpose was to find ways for giant robots to punch things, and would make up anything to get the audience on board.
     
  20. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    To me it's the same, just like some sex porn tries to have a story-line and other sex porn just gets right to the action.
     
  21. Feo Takahari

    Feo Takahari Senior Member

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    I like far-out or discredited scientific theories, like aether or the hollow earth. They've got just enough grounding to feel self-consistent, but still allow for flights of pure fancy.
     
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  22. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    The way that you described is a very layman's concept of string theory. The "multiple universes" described in string theory relates to different energy states of the universe, but the laws are the same. Forces and things change as the energy states change, in the early universe (our universe) everything traveled at the speed of light, it wasn't until the Higgs epoch that matter came to be. The number of universes would be infinite depending on how many false vacuum states there are, which would depend on the geometry of the universe. A string theory multiverse is usually not what is referred to when discussing the multiverse.

    Multiverse is usually one of 3 interpretations of regular old Standard Model physics.

    1) Quantum mechanics is what's called a perturbation theory, which basically means that a particle has a select set of interactions it can do, and it does all of them at once and doesn't decide until it interacts with something else. Which route it actually takes is random, and in the multiverse idea, each interaction causes a new universe to be formed.

    2) The Standard Model has 19 constants that are really weird and shouldn't be constants. They're finely tuned and altering any of them dramatically alters the laws of the universe. It's possible that these variables change through spacetime allowing sections of the universe to behave differently.

    3) The quantum fluctuations of spacetime can temporarily spawn new empty spacetime. Empty spacetime has an extreme outwards pressure and will expand rapidly. It's possible that our universe is constantly creating new universes from these fluctuations, mathematically, it's sound because each universe has a total energy of zero. Each universe is separate, but has almost the same laws of physics, it would allow an evolutionary process.


    A planet that large close enough to be in solar-stationary orbit would produce a redshift/blueshift of the star which would be easily detectable. There is also no way for any planet to completely cover up it's star from our point of view, the angular size of even the most massive planets don't come close to that of a star.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2016
  23. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    As stated elsewhere, I'm not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination and I may know absolutely nothing about how string theory and multiple universe theory intersect (but if you wanna point out how uninformed I am, have at it; I'm an easy target because I don't even know any big words), but this is what I was referring to:

    http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/05/other-universes-may-operate-under-vastly-different-physical-laws-todays-most-popular.html
     
  24. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as rude. I thought in a thread about scientific accuracy, I would provide some. I was just saying that you don't need string theory to provide a multiverse to your story.
     
  25. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    Ah! Okay. I wasn't sure what to make of your comments. On FB, there are a lot of people willing to get into arguments about this type of thing, I assumed the worst and overreacted. My apologies.

    I do try hard not to let scientific accuracy get in the way when I'm telling stories, though. ;)
     
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