Clearly there are some settings which make no sense scientifically. But how do I decide when to intentionally ignore reality, can't bother to do research, don't understand research, and thus create scientifically impossible places? When are such things considered be offensive or overused cliche or have a reader point out the impossibility and can't get into the story? I'm guessing some of this might be structural issues instead of world building?
Tex: One of the perils of attempting to write about highly technical subjects is that you run into the issue of not understanding your writing. I do raise a nominal objection as your first sentence, because sensibility is a sliding scale based on oneâs familiarity with a given subject. I donât know crap about, say, textile art (however much I might have bluffed readers in the past - no, no, this is just good googling skills on my end), but that doesnât mean the textile arts are an inherently incomprehensible subject.
Scientifically, automobiles were once thought to be insensible. Scientifically, phones were thought to be a flight of fancy. Scientifically, 3D printing was improbable. Scientifically, quantum computing was the stuff of sci-fi nerds who just wanted to slap the âquantumâ label on everything.
And yet we are now on the verge of robotic vehicles, mostly functional smartwatches, laser printing cells (PDF), and quantum computers (VentureBeat, IBM).
So I would argue that the insensibility of a setting would be due mostly to, yes, a structural issue - on the part of the author. No matter what you put into your world, internal consistency is key; nothing, no matter how ostensibly outlandish, will make sense if you contradict yourself.
Iâll volley a few questions back to you:
â[...] when to intentionally ignore realityâ - Are you ignoring reality entirely, or just parts of it? Why? How does that decision benefit your world? How does it detract from your world?
âCanât bother to do researchâ - Is it because you are discouraged by the breadth of your comprehension of a subject, compared to the subjectâs depth? Or is it because of something else?
âDonât understand researchâ - Is this because you donât understand the academic papers that turn up in your search results, or because you have a fundamental lack of or misunderstanding of the given subject? Or is it because of something else?
âWhen are such things considered to be offensive or overused clicheâ - As someone who intentionally arranges their studying around the plausibilities of the future, I would quite frankly be delighted to see more conceptual stretches of the imagination in this regard, as do many others on this blog, and beyond it. Why have you already passed judgement on the offensiveness or clichĂŠd-ness of incorporating scientific things? Is this related to your other comments?
â[...] or have a reader point out the impossibility and canât get into the story?â - If you are writing to please a specific individual or demographic, you are inevitably always going to fall short, because itâs genuinely impossible to meet every single item on a groupâs wishlist without devoting your life to it (not an entirely worthy pursuit, in my opinion, but alas). What made you decide to be so concerned over the potential reaction to your stories that you worry about it before the story is even written?
I think I will put the majority of my curiosityâs weight on the last bullet point, as Iâm seeing similar themes with the other portions of your question. Itâs a fruitless endeavour to tie yourself into knots over a possible (not necessarily probable!) reaction - and quite likely from a stranger, to boot. Education is a relatively easy situation to fix, so long as youâre patient with yourself; dealing with anxieties over readers is⌠not so easy.
I can really only recommend that you take a close look at the goals of your worldbuilding, and see where you contradict yourself - once you have that in hand, itâs a relatively simple yes/no process of what concepts you want to keep. If the issue of decision comes from a lack of understanding, then make a note to yourself to seek out either the million wikis we Pylons utilize ourselves like any other worldbuilder, or to chalk it up as a genuine lack of context.
Please understand that even someone whoâs dedicated their life to a certain aspect of science wonât know everything about it - thatâs the point of research! Weâre constantly asking ourselves questions, and pushing the envelope of known boundaries. Star Wars has lightsabers, but we donât need to know how they work; likewise with holodecks in Star Trek. So long as an audience is reasonably entertained with the least amount of head-scratching, you can get away with handwaving quite a lot.
Lockea: On a scale between Star Trek and Star Wars, how âhardâ is your science fiction?
I mention that mostly to illustrate that science fiction exists on a continuum, wherein science fiction with more âscienceâ than âfictionâ drives a story towards the harder end rather than the softer end. Also, a storyâs place on the continuum will change based on what we know and understand about science.
I feel like everyone always beats me to saying all the important stuff about questions, so Iâll just give a few thoughts from my personal experience as a science fiction fan with two engineering degrees and a thesis about robots on the moon (yes really, I wrote my thesis on AI for moon robots). I really, really, love the creativity of science fiction writers. I think so often in defending the genre, we can get caught up in saying things like âscience fiction predicted XYZ!â Well, sure, I may have studied Isaac Asimovâs three laws of robotics in my introduction to engineering ethics course, but I was also greedily reading my way through âThe Hunger Gamesâ by Suzanne Collins at the same time. The fact that I sincerely doubt Panem will ever happen didnât dampen my enjoyment of Katnissâs story. It was a fun read and it gave my friends and I something to talk about that wasnât âfeasibility of Battlestar Galacticaâ during our daily lunches.
The thing about writing science fiction is that, without a doubt, there will be someone who knows more than you about a topic who reads your story. Most of the time, I end up being that someone since everyone likes to talk about Skynet and robots taking over the world to a roboticist who sincerely refers to artificial intelligence as artificial stupidity. Y'all are seriously overestimating the field, my friends. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed âCaptain America: The Winter Soldierâ even as I thought how impossible Project Insight would be. Honestly, something every READER of science fiction needs to make peace with is the fact that writers will get something wrong. Writers, despite their best efforts, are not always going to understand that a facial recognition algorithm will fail if you introduce tiny amounts of random noise and are thus going to treat The Algorithm⢠as infallible in your crime drama novel.
Itâs not the writerâs fault, though.
That deserves to be on its own line. It is not YOUR fault if you get something wrong. Would it be nice if science literacy was just better all around? Of course! But itâs not your fault if your science literacy isnât up to snuff enough to parse the article I cited above. Itâs also not your job. Your job as the writer is to tell the most interesting story you can and to maintain your own internal rules and logic such that the reader never breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.
I watch Star Wars and get really into the light saber fight scenes and forget that light sabers are basically impossible to make. Star Wars has the Force, which is basically magic, and thatâs okay. Really. I KNOW itâs not possible, but I still have a lot of fun watching it!
So yeah, write that story about how the robots are going to take over the world. Iâll probably enjoy reading it even as I laugh off my friends telling me that I will be the first to die in the robot apocalypse (of course I will -- I have five robots in my living room alone).
Constablewrites: Tone and consistency are the biggest pieces of this for me. If itâs the kind of story where the answer to âHow does this work?â is usually a detailed and plausible explanation, then getting an answer later that is implausible or slapdash will stand out more. But if itâs the kind of story where the answer to âHow does this work?â is âYou push that button and it goes whooshâ from the start, my expectations adjust accordingly. (Itâs possible to have the latter version in a story that is mostly the former, frequently when itâs played for last. Again, tone is key.)
So yeah, a lot of this is execution and the way the story sticks to the rules it sets for itself, and also how central the implausibility is to the story. A realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic for a background bit might be a little jarring, but not nearly as much as a realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic to set up its main showdown. The more central it is to the story, the more consistency and accuracy matters. Learning how to balance this can take some practice and some insight from beta readers.