Do I need technobabble?

I'm writing a science fiction story on the softer side of the genre (think of Dune or Star Wars). It includes technology like FTL travel and time machines. Do you as a reader need technobabble to immerse yourself or, as the focus is on the characters and the drama rather than the tech, are you alright with omitting it? I myself lean towards the latter approach.

For example, when one of the protagonists asks a scientist how the time machine works, the scientist replies more or less "It's too complex for you to understand the science behind it; it just works". I figured no explanation is better than a bad one and since the focus is on character drama there needn't be any technobabble but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

 

When I read science fiction, I don't necessarily want thorough explanations of how the various tech works, unless it helps advance the story, but 'take my word for it' doesn't work either. Seems like if your character can't offer at least a basic explanation of how something that doesn't exist now works, it (or he) might not belong in the story.

 

I abhor technobabble. If a story starts spewing "He laced the photon receivers with super tape to protect their magnetic spools." I throw the book out the window. Unless it is a really good book, then I will just skip the technobabble. Such stuff takes me right out of being immersed.

When writing I also avoid technobabble, I just state how things function in the plainest way possible. "The ship uses a phase drive that creates a bubble around it which allows the ship to travel faster than light without hitting any objects." Or something like that. I try to avoid having to explain technology by having every character not ask questions about it. It just exists and works, and people in my universe are mostly familiar with the tech.

Today if someone explains to me how a computer screen works, I won't understand much because I am not technically inclined. Yeah I am a science fiction writer.

That's just me, though.

 

In any story, every word has to earn its place. What purpose would the technobabble serve? By all means have a character use technical terms to create verisimilitude. For example:

sounds reasonable, against:

Of course, you might want to throw in a small amount of technobabble to drive plot points forward. So instead of:

you can have him say:

That extra information drives the main plot by forcing Marty to travel to the past to escape the terrorists, plus a sub-plot of him needing to find another energy source in the 50s, plus another sub-plot of him trying to save Doc's life, plus the flux capacitor lets him earn Doc's trust in the 50s. So that little technobabble is absolutely earning its keep.

 

The scientist character could explain what is happening without the 'why' or working theory behind it, like in the latter half of this scene.

I never understood why everyone laughed when the young one gives a perfectly fine answer to Neill's question. What, it's too obvious? Come on.

 

Makes me think of star trek the next generation. They get into these amazing jams and all looks lost, then, out of nowhere, Jordy says, "...if we reverse the gravity anti-gravity ion flux, maybe we can reroute just enough power to the auxillary manifold and I can bring our warp engines back on-line!!"

Everytime they do that, which was on every episode, i thought, Ok where's the scotch. This show sucks.

Not sure if that helps you or not.

 

Wow—it's Deus ex Machina via Technobabble...

 

Come to think of it, that's exactly what it is.

 

I think you only need a lot of technobabble if you're introducing new concepts. If FTL uses hyperspace, for instance, we're familiar with the concept. Mention hyperspace, and that's all you need. I'd say the same is true of time travel. You can make up some nonsense like the flux capacitor that doesn't need explanation because it's made up, or you can hand wave it. One of my favorite instances of sidestepping the science of time travel was in the movie Looper. Bruce Willis says, "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws."

 

You could have the scientist look at the other charater for a moment, assessing his level of technical understanding and the difficulty of explaining it to him, and he could say something like—"In order to understand how it works, you'd need four years of advanced theoretical calculus and six years of applied physics." Or it could be more one of these—"Nobody really knows how it works. I mean there are technical terms, and we can make accurate predictions, but I've studied the science of it for over a decade, already having advanced degrees in theoretical calculus and applied physics, and I can't say I really understand it. Not so I could explain it to anybody."

 

Technobabble is an unfortunate heritage from the pulp days.

 

Considering authors from the pulp era, were actually sceintists, technological explainations were par for the course.

In response to the OP.

The ships engineer, started to explain how the FTL engines work to me. As he started talking about exotic particles and their gravitation effects, I felt my eyes glaze over. I could feel his technical explaination flowing into one ear and out the other, at the speed of a suborbital flight.

 

To my mind, a small amount may be required. Not enough to slow the pace of the story, but enough to engender some degree of understanding of what's happening.

Another thing to consider: Is there a difference between a complex explanation and a brief description? Once again: To my mind a complex discussion loaded with incomprehensible math and material terms is techno-babble. On the other hand a brief description is not. That may help your thought process.

JMHO...

 

It's called babble for a reason. No-one wants to read babble. I think it's safe to assume that most readers don't want a lesson in technology. Concentrate on the story. But on the other hand, I wouldn't have the scientist say, "You wouldn't understand it." He can give a concise answer that shows he understands while at the same time giving credence to the technology. "The inversion of space-time," the scientist replied.

 

While not technobabble, take a look at David Weber's Honor Harrington series. He gets into some complex math talking about missle combat. But the way it is done it is easy to skim past, if it starts making your eyes cross.

 

I'm sorry for thread necromancy but I thought this was an interesting question for an exercise.

How would/do we react today when first faced with new technology we've never seen before?

For example a friend turns up to the pub on a 120BHP electric motorcycle and wants you to give it a spin. If you asked them how it worked would they say, "It just does", or would they say, "No gears, no clutch, just turn the throttle and you get instant torque. Bam. Its incredible. Terrible battery life though so don't go too far, I need to be able to get home."

Alternative: You work in a production line you are met by some middle manager ass wearing the latest in corporate oversight trash, an AI lapel pin (they exist), and they told you you were all going to be wearing them, and you asked how they work. Even then they wouldn't say, "It just does", they'd say something like, "You pair it with your Bluetooth earphones and it'll use its camera to tell you what to work on next. Just put it on and it'll walk you through the rest automatically."

/necromancy

 

I would say this question boils down to the tone of the story and your target audience.

Take Back to the Future, as an example. The only thing that might be considered technobabble is the Fluxcapacitor. The part is named, but there is never a detailed explanation of what it does. The instructions for using it are all in simple language.

While David Weber's Honor Harrington series gets detailed with star ship missile combat, but does it in a way the reader can skim the section if it doesn't interest them, and not detract from the story by doing so.

The question here is more who is my audience and is technobabble something they expect (as a trope)?

 

Yes, I like this approach. It's the way most of us understand the devices we use. We have no understanding of the technology, we just know "Hit the gas to go, the brake to stop, and signal before you turn. And when nothing else works hit the horn." It focuses on how to interface with the tech, or how to use it, rather than technobabble concerning the physics of it. I don't recall ever needing to try to explain the inner workings of an internal combustion engine or a computer to anybody (thank god— I have no clue how they really work).

 

By Jove he's got it.

 

Sometimes it can be beneficial. Michael Crichton used it effectively in several novels, including Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Timeline, Congo. In some cases it adds to the realism if you can pull it off.

 

Yeah as others have mentioned, what's important is that the characters understand it within the context in which they exist. Unless you're doing a fish out of water tale, though even then, it's not absolutely necessary to explain everything.

I think the most excessive technobabble is demonstrated in Star Trek. It takes place hundreds of years in the future, and there's so much tech that works with physics that don't exist yet or are theoretical, or haven't been discovered yet. But somehow it works just fine because everyone in that universe is presented as knowing how it all works and believing it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KnIZFlHI3-I?feature=share (oops don't look like "shorts" get embedded like regular videos. Anyway, it's short and fun.)

 

Personally, I abhor technobabble. And if you really, really want to explain something... well, put it in the Codex of sorts or else into fusnotes.

 

Look at it this way:

I work on boats a lot. Depending on which boat it is, my job is either to jump onto other boats and catch bad guys or jump onto other boats and do...well...first responder stuff. Either way, my understanding of the engines is pretty damned basic. If the mech tells me the starboard turbo has gone bang or whatever and we're on one engine, that's enough for me; it's his job to go down and fix the thing, not mine, so his providing more detailed knowledge of the issue in the middle of an operation does not help me achieve my goals and wastes our time. He can explain it all he likes afterwards, though, especially if it's something we need to watch out for.

So, the question is...do your characters need to explain these things to each other- or to the reader, for that matter- or does the story chug along quite happily without it? Unlike my boat and the starboard turbo, which took a week to get replaced.

My own work involves a few magical concepts and legal, naval and military terminology that the protagonist explains in very brief terms in footnotes if he decides the reader might potentially benefit from the added knowledge. Naturally, though, he assumes that the reader, though perhaps separated from him in space, time and culture still exists within his world, so there are a lot of concepts on which he sees no need to elaborate, as they're very basic to him, so he names them and tells of their use but offers no explanation. The magic system, for example, is never explained in depth because 'pfffft, it's magic, everyone knows how that works'.