McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Science-Fiction: How 'real' must a technology be?
Galvatron:
There is nothing wrong with bio-tech in sci-fi, there is plenty of room for that sort of thing to be worked in.
Wordmaker:
So you don't believe that the same basic fantasy story can be told in a high fantasy, western, Victorian or World War 2 setting? Because they've all been done. They just get dressed up differently.
At their core, for example, Star Wars is the same story as Eragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the recent Captain America movie. The detail just get changed to suit the setting.
As for thrillers? For sure you can tell the same stories. For one thing, you can take cell phones out of the equation in a number of plausible ways.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Wordmaker on June 11, 2013, 06:43:45 PM ---So you don't believe that the same basic fantasy story can be told in a high fantasy, western, Victorian or World War 2 setting? Because they've all been done. They just get dressed up differently.
--- End quote ---
Maybe we're seeing things on different scales, then, because when you say "dressed up differently", I am seeing different degrees of contrivance within the shape of the world to make the story work.
--- Quote ---At their core, for example, Star Wars is the same story as Eragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the recent Captain America movie. The detail just get changed to suit the setting.
--- End quote ---
IIRC, all of those stories have points where they would break if everyone in the story had the same functional communications capacity, relative to the scale of the setting, as having cellphones (or internet access) as default enables.
--- Quote ---As for thrillers? For sure you can tell the same stories. For one thing, you can take cell phones out of the equation in a number of plausible ways.
--- End quote ---
Oh aye, of course you can. But having to do that is to my mind itself making the story a different shape; it is throwing in a factor you don't get for free the same way you do in a pre-industrial setting.
For another example, I can think of maybe two or three examples of fantasy authors who have actually thought through the intersection of a world with fairly common magical healing, and what that does to population growth in a quasi-medieval setting, and the economics of the whole deal.
Wordmaker:
We probably are. I'm thinking of story in very broad terms, along the lines of "boy from humble origins discovers secret heritage and becomes a hero."
Ulfgeir:
How hard the science has to be depends on what kind of story you write. If the rest of the setting is down-to earth gritty pigfarming then you can't very well have FTL-travel without having the mechanics of it worked out. Otherwise it would just be a miracle. On the other hand if it is a larger than life space opera, no need to have it worked out.
The important is that the degree of science you use fit with the setting and the story, and is internally consistent.
/Ulfgeir
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