EDIT: @Xoic has pointed out that I could have been clearer. So: Thread intended as possible inspiration for all us under-watered would-be authors. Sci-Fi contrivance, meaning those wonderful central ideas around which great science fiction authors tend to hang a plot, or a passing flash of brilliance in what is otherwise a basic space-opera/grim-dark-generic-dystopia. Arthur C Clarke surely the master of these, so many to choose between. But allow me to start with my all time favourite, which is instead taken from one of the five Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams: The 'Someone Else's Problem' field'*. Introduced by a spaceship powered by an Italian bistro** landing in the stands at Lords during a cricket match, which everyone ignores. It is explained that many through-out the galaxy tried classic invisibility fields, until they realised it was far more effective to project the sensation that whatever it was was best left to someone else to deal with, and thus can safely be ignored. The man was a genius. ________________________________ * Thanks for correction @Hammer. ** Another pretty good contrivance right there; the bistro drive derived its power from the waves of indifference that come off of Italian waiters when you are trying and failing to get their attention to place an order. Or something.
I was extremely perplexed by this when I first ran across it: Reading it over several times it slowly cleared up—the story isn't by Clarke as I expected, but by Douglas Adams, might be the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or just called Hitchiker? And I guess you mean it was intended to be a trilogy but ended up being five books? A lot of confusion packed into a brief string of words, each of which I understand perfectly on their own. Yeah, I love the idea of something radiating an aura that just makes people ignore it or immediately forget about it. It deals not with the physics of bending light rays but of bending the attention away from something. This actually is far more likely to work and possible to achieve. I seem to have that ability at times in fact.
A sci-fi concept I really like is a creature spawned by Gene Wolfe in his New Sun series called an Alzabo. It's a huge shambling thing somewhat like a massive bear apparently that devours people, but then later the person's voice can emerge from the creature. Not parroting or recorded, but their actual voice, speaking coherently to people who knew them, through the creature. The person speaks to them, making complete sense and able to hear and respond to what they say (if I remember it right). It was used in the movie version of Annihilation, where a huge mutant bear with a skull-face partially devoured people and then their voices could be heard, mostly just anguished screams of agony and fear as it was tearing into them. Wolfe's Alzabo was far more articulate and able to express ideas and hold conversations with people. Later I read Wolfe's explanation. He said it represented a person who's been 'swallowed up' or devoured by a social institution like a corporation or a cult, and has lost their individuality and become nothing but a mouthpiece that the institution speaks through. I didn't get that directly from the story, but once I understood it I was amazed for some time at the power of it. Wolfe has many more where that came from too, though often their meaning is obscure until you seek out his explanations. Still though his work is powerful and you can tell it deals with deep issues like this, though it can be hard to grasp just from the reading.
My favorite sci-fi contrivance is the fact that in Halo, the Pillar of Autumn, a monster warship, seems to be held together by a tiny bridge that can only be gotten to by the warthog track that runs for 2km over the 1km long ship. It’s only there for a cinematic where you watch your ride get shot down.
I came across this one recently by accident, had no knowledge of it. I was reading Heinlein's 1952 juvenile novel The Rolling Stones, and was introduced to his invention, the "flat cat." They are the original Tribbles! I was a bit stunned, so I looked it up, and sure enough, the writer of that Star Trek script realized that he must have been influenced by that book, which he did confirm reading at some point, and reached out to Heinlein regarding the copyright. Heinlein gave his approval, provided that the writer send him a signed copy of the script.
Noumenon, by Marina J. Lostetter, had gigantic spaceships take off from Earth slowly but steadily using graviton cyclers. The hell with fuel limitations and the tyranny of the rocket equation, just have the technology deal with the very particle that controls gravity itself!
@Mogador Am in the middle of re-reading Asimov’s FOUNDATION series, and forgot about the Mules power. He can change a human’s emotional state, but not his actual thoughts. He can’t change a person’s mind only their emotional state. The Mule with this power is unstoppable and takes over the Galaxy within five years. It’s a really unusual superpower which Asimov exploits and breaks beautifully. MartinM
Belief. Its come up twice that i've seen. Once in fantasy once in sci-fi. In fantasy, Dwarves refused to believe magic was real and therefore, magic never affected them. You couldnt hurl a fireball at them and kill them, because they BELIEVED it couldnt possible be a real fireball. In sci-fi, magic was effectively quantum mechanics and belief that something existed only if you determined it did. So if a "mage" believed there was a hole in the wall, then there was a hole in the wall and he could walk through it.
Hmm, dunno if I have any very specific ones. I do like psychic powers, or really any sci-fi equivalent to magic. Also directed energy weapons, because lasers are always going to be cooler than bullets. Oh, and energy swords, or any "powered" melee weapon. (But major bonus points if it's all glowy.) If there's a solid justification for it, like in Star Wars or Dune, that's a plus. But honestly, I don't really care if it doesn't make sense. Speaking of Star Wars and Dune: Space cultures that are... I guess fancy would be the word? Like very impressive architecture and cool clothes and statues, etc. Like there's another Renaissance going on - not all glass, concrete and neon signs everywhere. This is basically how the perception filters from Doctor Who work: The thing is there, right in front of you, but something causing your brain to not notice it. Or, it makes you think it's something different that you'd expect to see. This one species of alien vampires looked like normal people but whenever they attacked their appearance would turn more monstrous with fangs and all that. Sort of like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then it turns out that they're just using perception filters to appear human, and the reason they change back during attacks is because they trigger your survival instincts which actually overpowers the filter temporarily. A similar thing is the Doctor's psychic paper. Whenever someone asks for identification, the Doctor just holds up the paper and it causes the person to believe it is the credentials of whoever that person thinks is important enough to listen to. I'm pretty sure even the Doctor doesn't know if that will turn out to be a general or an inspector or whatever. The only problem is that it doesn't work on people with exceptionally poor imagination; they just see a blank piece of paper. Then there was the aliens who used techno-blood magic to mind control a huge number of humans and threatened to make them kill themselves, but the Doctor called their bluff: It was really just mild hypnosis - the equivalent of a parlor trick - and couldn't force you to do anything you'd genuinely refuse to do. ...Actually, I kinda like this motif in general, come to think of it: Mind-trickery that doesn't always work or is limited in what it can achieve, simply because the mind is too complex to trick completely and not all people think the same way. That's how magic worked in Mage: The Ascension, sort of. The idea was that, contrary to popular belief, reality is actually very malleable and can be altered by will alone, and the mages were people who suddenly realized this. It came with a huge caveat, though, namely the aforementioned popular belief. Everyone could do this, not just the mages. Normal people just did it subconsciously, creating what was called the Consensus Reality. In other words, things are possible or impossible only because most people agree that this is how the universe works. This meant that if normal people saw a mage levitate or turn someone into a frog or whatever, their minds immediately went "That's impossible!" which caused reality to change back to what it was "supposed" to be and hitting the mage with a sort of damaging backlash called Paradox. So instead of throwing a fireball from your hand, it was much safer to for example make a nearby gas pipe explode since the latter was easier to rationalize. I always thought that was a very clever way of having a hidden magic world where magicians can't reveal themselves.
I genuinely reversed the polarity on my company's mad bad and dangerous to know invention today. And then it worked. Doctor Who didn't lie after all. True story.
Ansibles. Gateways. Anything to do with ancient artifacts on uninhabited worlds. Anything to do with Gene Wolfe
I would have to go with John Ringo's Looking glass series. He has a giant tree shaped Space Station, that is actually a Concert Venue. When Music is being played in the station it excites the Gas Giants in the system for a light show.
There are two interesting bits of science that seem to conflict, and that conflict could be interesting plot fodder. As a thought experiment, how do you resolve the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation?
