The Sword and Laser discussion

So here's the thing. I've recently (by recently, I mean I've got about 6k words) started writing a space opera, but I still want to incorporate at least somewhat plausible technology. The setting is about 400 years into the future and Earth deserves only a passing mention so no future Earth stuff.

However, I find I don't have any good resource material, having never written anything more complex than an sf novella. I don't want it to be exactly hard science stuff, but I also don't want to stretch the definition of 'suspension of disbelief'.

Can anyone recommend any good resource books? Particularly scientific books about the make of space stations and future space operations but that wouldn't be too difficult for a poor Lit major to understand. I'm not entirely lacking in knowledge, but most of it is from other science fiction novels and thus not terribly reliable.

Three books on Amazon-

Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space
http://amzn.to/IWxxRr

How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Plane
http://amzn.to/IWxgOp

Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets
http://amzn.to/IWxlBN

I wouldn't get too hung up on the technology.
Stick with the concepts.
(good luck)

Thanks a lot, Warren.

I don't want to get too technical, but I need prior knowledge to even determine what would be 'too technical'.

Ok, so main rule is: Any technology that is advanced enough can be seen as magic.
So, if you want to stay on a "plausible" level and keep out of the magic debate, you'd want to avoid that.

If you're able to understand german (or find this book in english), maybe Das Buch der Zukunft would be a good and easy idea.

To sum up a few things in "common" media:
- fusion energy will probably be available in about 100 years

- the nasa wants to be on the mars in less than 100 years, but real colonisation will certainly take longer

- Faster-than-light travel is kind of problematic (e = mc²; the faster you go the heavier you are and the more energy is used up by accelerating, light speed means need for infinite energy), so stick to wormholes (which are links between two black holes) if you want to keep out of this field of science.

- Laser weapons are not only plausible (if you get a pwoer supply strong enough), but also quite appropriate for space warfare (uses no bullets as they would stay in motion until they hit something)

- It is generally not believed that humanity will leave the solar system in the next 400 years (although anything could happen in that timespan)

- Electronics will get flexible and printable and mostly consist of plastic

- Psychological problems will be a big prioblem in the society, as older people who have worked a lot with their brains are likely to have them (burnout syndrome, ...)

- If you include aliens, make their technology logic and plausible as well

- Information transfer through the universe takes a long time, too. Check out quantum entanglement for real time comm.

And don't forget, you could always ask us (the community) if something is plausible or not.
Please don't spoil anything ;-)

Looking forward to reading your work!

Wow, thanks a bunch, Valentin!

Das Buch Der Zukunft went directly on my to-read list - I've been speaking German for a good 17 years, fairly sure I can read that.

Your tips are fantastic. I'm kind of proud I already knew some of that, or at least guessed (lasers seemed like a good option to me, because I'd recently read about advancements in that field of technology myself, so they're already featured in the draft of the book).

Don't worry, I'll probably be bugging the S&L community for tips for months to come. I'll be very careful about spoilers when I do, though!

Thanks again!

Planet Janitor has got some space flight and propulsion theory that might help you in your tech area. It is staged in the near future about 300 years from now.

I know I just watch a lot of science documentaries on Discover, History Channel, Science Channel and so forth. That alone helped me greatly when writing Hunter. I know there's a lot of those on Netflix streaming if you're interested.
Before I finalized publication, I read one of Brian Greene's books for research and that also helped. I suggest looking him up, then see similar suggestions that Amazon or other people/stores/search engines give.

I will say this: you often don't have to outline everything. It's one thing to keep to what is theoretically possible. It's another to keep the mechanics obscure. In fact the techno-babble can get in the way of the story. So only include enough so it's both believable and for what you're using that piece of technology for. For an example of the latter, watch the first episode of Dollhouse. It may not be the best story, but the it does more with it's technology just in that episode than most series do.

^Definitely what he said.

I'll also add that you're best off deciding what sort of genre and audience you'd be writing for.

Think of the ends of the spectrum of technobabble (hard vs. soft sci-fi) as more of a slider bar. Whatever you choose, make sure it's consistent. You can easily get away with using (and offering zero explanation on) generally accepted sci-fi terms (from pulse rifle to fusion reactor) without raising any eyebrows.

Rather than fire off a pile of various things, there's a really good episode of Extra Credits which covers this sort of thing.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/epis...

Thanks, Sean, Justin. :)

I've got a lot of reading to do now. I'll keep on writing, of course, and then just go back and rewrite or include the stuff I research.

Believe it or not there are a few "Dummies Guides" that cover some advanced subjects. Ones I am thinking of include:

Space Exploration for Dummies
Genetics For Dummies (For Dummies
Astronomy For Dummies (For Dummies
String Theory For Dummies (For Dummies
Thermodynamics for Dummies
Quantum Physics for Dummies
Nanotechnology For Dummies (For Dummies

The "Complete Idiots Guides" also have a few advanced books.

To tell you the truth, I've never even seen a "for Dummies" book in real life. I haven't seen a single one in any of the bookstores around here, so I didn't think of them at all. I'll see if I can find some. Thanks, Andrew!

I did, however, put an order for several interesting issues of various magazines that deal with the sort of thing I'm looking for, so at least I'm making some progress.

Project Rho is a good online archive of science fiction ideas and scientifically plausible concepts. It's kind of a mess to navigate though. The index might help:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/crossindex.php

To chew on: FTL travel is a pretty standard trope of Sci Fi. Assimov even did it in his I, Robot stories. You can work it in lots of way, often the easiest being to simply have a "Hyperdrive" and have it push ships up to speeds faster than the speed of light.

Most of these get around Relativity Theory by saying that you are traveling through "Hyper SPace" at non-Faster-than-light speeds therefore not kicking in the time dilation stuff.

For the project I'm working on I'm giving each ship the ability to create a temporary wormhole to fall through to another point in space. Energy limitations restrict how long these holes go in real space, as well as how often a ship can open them which keeps me from having a fleet that can be anywhere at any time.

You may want to start keeping a notebook of some kind (or file) where you keep track of the tech though. Some people like to have the names of the gadgets (so the list will help you keep it consistant) and other people will like to try to check it against "real".

The good news is that there is precious little that isn't "POSSIBLE" given current tech projections. There are just big problems to overcome getting there.

Famously the Transporters on the Enterprise have things called the Heisenburg Compensators. Lore has it that at one time someone pointed out that to read a person's molecules down to such a level of specificity (ie exact point in space and exact mass) was nearly impossible because, according the the Hiesenburg Uncertainty principle, the more more accurately you can record an object's location, the less accurately you can measure it's velocity. So to "compensate" for this, they "invited" the compensators.

I've been toying with the idea of wormholes, but I'm not entirely sure what the limitations would be. I should really just hunker down for a period of prolonged thinking and reading about these things.

Keeping a notebook filled with tech info is an excellent idea, Rob. I currently have all the resources I've managed to collect so far just kinda thrown together in a folder, but a notebook might work better for me since I prefer leafing through it rather than searching on my PC. (I'm the strange kind of person who gets really worked up about new technology but doesn't implement it until the last second.)

I've heard the story of the Heisenberg Compensator. I'm a huge fan of Star Trek, so a lot of my sci-fi references come from that universe, actually.

You guys are amazing though, all of you. Thanks ever so much! I love this community.

Another one I forgot, check out the British Interplanetary Society. There is a lot of information about current and future tech on their website. Arthur C. Clark was one of their most influential members.

http://www.bis-space.com/

Ok, I posted this in the podcast thread, but putting it here, too, since I didn't know of this thread until I heard about it on the podcast.

I second Tom's recommendation of Krauss. He tries to make physics accessible, and has some great videos on YouTube and some great books on stuff that will be helpful.

Also, don't be afraid to reach out to experts for their opinion while you're writing. Looks like there are some S&L'ers who could help, or maybe going to a local college/university, might ask them to read a few passages and let you know if there is anything that's particularly crazy.

As for links to other stuff that's for mere mortals, looks like a lot of people here have info on that. I work in the aerospace industry but don't go around looking for stuff that's aimed at a lay audience, so I'm not much help there. But I'd be happy to read stuff and be used as a "bounce ideas off" type person. Good luck!

This is a great thread. I'll have to look at some of the links.

Thanks, Kristin! I'll most likely take you up on that offer to bounce ideas off you in the future, if you're up for it. :)

Aloha wrote: "This is a great thread. I'll have to look at some of the links."

While I was looking for things that might help me specifically, I also thought a thread like this might be a good idea for anyone that's struggling with sci-fi concepts and alike. Everyone should feel free to share links and books - I might not use all of them, but they'll help someone else. So I'm glad you found things of interest here, as well.

It depends to some extent on what type of SF novel you are writing, either far future speculative or plausible 'hard' science fiction.

The sources I suggested are above the average Joe on the street knowledge, but are at a level where they could be easily explained in a novel. I think the trick of good hard science fiction is taking advanced or speculative science and weaving them into a story in such a way that the average intelligent reader can grasp the concept.

weaving them into a story in such a way that the average intelligent reader can grasp the concept.

And then ~not~ violating the rules in a way that makes people who do know want to .... do something bad.

I still cringe when I think about the Chromosomes in Twilight....

Edit to add:

Though, rereading the OP, there is often more leniancy when you're doing "Space Opera" over "Science Fiction".

It comes down to how much you want to get caught up in explaining how things work as that will set the standard. Star Wars really doesn't in the movies go into much depth on how Hyperspace Drives work. You just go into "Hyperspace" and now you're going faster than light. Star Trek on the other hand puts some work into explaining how Warp Drives change mass and density within a "warp field" and that is what allows FTL travel.

Rob wrote: "I still cringe when I think about the Chromosomes in Twilight...."

Oh god, why did you have to go and remind me about that? I nearly threw the book across the room, but then I remembered it was my aunt's and she'd kill me if I damaged it. Which is partly what stopped me from destroying the book(s) at so many other points.

And then ~not~ violating the rules in a way that makes people who do know want to .... do something bad.

Violating the rules of your own established universe is pretty bad too. Which is why I want to have a consistent set of rules written out before I go any further into the story.

I'd say I'm aiming for something in between - I want the technobabble to be plausible, but I'm not gonna bother explaining every little thing. It doesn't make for good storytelling, if I pause every few minutes to explain how something works, anyway. But the broad strokes ought to be somewhat explainable within the confines of contemporary physics. I don't think it's incredibly important that the reader know exactly how future-cryogenic-suits work (I'm just using this as an example, don't get too caught up about it) since they can more or less infer on their own what it means, but I do want to be able to explain how FTL travel is possible in this universe.

I'm not sure if I'm confusing myself here or if my brain was fried by the hair iron, but does that make sense?

Just wanted to add, regarding Krauss: his lecture "A Universe from Nothing" is amazing. I was familiar with most of the concepts before, but it was still fascinating to listen to.

I think you're spot on Agatha. FTL is one of those things that most people what to know the basics of because it factors so much into the "logistics" of your space society. How do you get goods from point A to point B? Assuming that you use FTL...

It's worth noting that in Firefly, there are no FTL drives, and the entire series takes place in a single solar system.

The other one that gets tricky is communication. Radio waves only travel at the speed of light, ergo you also need something like that if you want to have real time communication between points.

I'm planning on using wormholes as my core FTL tech, which makes communications more likely to be packet based (ie write a message, package it with others, open a hole, transmit it through, wait for a response) and that allows me to tap more into the old Submarine movies and the like for themes to explore.

My story setup requires at least two connected solar systems. I'm currently thinking of going with a jump drive concept and having specific prearranged jump points within the solar systems (this will interact rather well with the almost-but-not-quite abandoned space station where the story is set in motion - if it's quite far from the prearranged jump point, it makes sense for it to be half-empty). Conservation of momentum is a problem I'm facing with this, since jump points would then be an outside force interacting with the ship. I'm no mathematician/physicist, as I think is incredibly obvious, but that's how it seems to me.

Communication might be subject to deus ex machina because I have no freaking clue how to deal with that. :P

I actually wrote a paper on the real science behind science fiction. I would reccommend:
Physics of Star Trek
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Beyond Star Trek: From Alien Invasions to the End of Time
The Science In Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions That Became Scientific Reality

And for anything more specific, I would try searching EBSCOhost Science Reference Center if you have access to it.