McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Science-Fiction: How 'real' must a technology be?
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:
--- Quote from: Wordmaker on June 11, 2013, 04:03:11 PM ---Absolutely. What I mean is that you can keep your overall story, the concept, the same, regardless of tech level.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
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