Book: "Spacecraft Design for Science Fiction Authors"

[Starglider]

I have a book somewhat similar in concept; The Science in Science Fiction, by Peter Nicholls, published in 1982. It's fairly well written, but has a tendency to go for pretty pictures over functional diagrams, and the broadness of the scope (all types of futuristic technology and science) means that the treatment of each area is very shallow (two pages on cloning, four pages on time travel etc). Alas it is now very out of date, not to mention out of print.

[Dragon Angel]

As a hopeful sci-fi writer here (for instance, I've challenged myself to keep my senior university project to mostly hard sci-fi, instead of the usual soft sci-fi ideas that float around in my brain), this book would be of HUGE assistance to me. I have a bit of a past with physics and engineering, so I tend to take actual science seriously, but I am far from complete. Something to reference occasionally - if I need help with determining if some doo-hickey I create makes sense or insults the intelligence - would be absolutely marvelous.

You may have mentioned it in some form in your blogs, but I admittedly only had the time to skim through it now (mainly because of the aforementioned project). Would you be including current ideas on stuff like exotic power generation (by that, I mean matter/antimatter, miniature controlled black holes, etc.) and possible faster-than-light drives? Those two are things of which I've scrambled my mind for good solutions, but alas I am no theoretical physicist.

[Zixinus]

A more in-detail book about how to design space ships? The only thing I can say that I would buy it. I might give it a once-read trough or even use it as a reference, but I don't think it will do much more than a bunch of other books on my computer or on my shelf.

*looks at bookshelf*

So much to read, so little patience.

[Connor MacLeod]

Mind you, you don't want to give nerds the impression that they actually understand the subject matter in any serious way. All the books would give them is the ability to write fiction in a manner that doesn't induce howls of derision and laughter from anyone who knows what he's talking about.

How many people thought they understood the principle of entropy (or plenty of other physics concepts) just because they read Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"?

I'd say that has more to do with mentality of the reader than anything in the book. You could be completely neutral or even say "This isnt a replacement for an actual education" and some nitwit will go on and assume because they read that book (or like your Hawking example) and this makes them an authority. I've had to learn that despite all I have learned (which is alot) I am still an amateur and not the equal of an actual engineer or scientist, and that my knowledge does not give me a right to argue with them on equal subjects on the same level as they do. Not everyone is willing to admit that those gaps in their knowledge, big or small as they might be, actually hinder their ability to argue, and hence it leads to problems.

[Mayabird]

Now, if'n y'all want bad writing, I could break out some of my actual science fiction.

Shudder.

You know, if you really wanted to, for laughs or because someone slighted you or whatever reason, you could post them in the Fanfics forum, since it's not just for fanfics. And I doubt it could be any worse than some of the things I've seen in there. Unless you already deleted them for the good of humanity like I did with this novel I wrote in my teens.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd say that has more to do with mentality of the reader than anything in the book. You could be completely neutral or even say "This isnt a replacement for an actual education" and some nitwit will go on and assume because they read that book (or like your Hawking example) and this makes them an authority. I've had to learn that despite all I have learned (which is alot) I am still an amateur and not the equal of an actual engineer or scientist, and that my knowledge does not give me a right to argue with them on equal subjects on the same level as they do. Not everyone is willing to admit that those gaps in their knowledge, big or small as they might be, actually hinder their ability to argue, and hence it leads to problems.

I think you could write a book that would give people a suitable frame of reference to understand scientific concepts. At least to the point where they won't say deeply foolish things because they don't know how, say, energy conservation works. But it would be difficult, and it would only work on readers who aren't morons...

It's not that these things are inexplicable, or even that they're inexplicable without extremely high level math. It's that half-assed attempts to popularize them can do more harm than good to someone who thinks of science as a subject where you can cherrypick a few bits of knowledge and use them as convenient without having to pay attention to the rest.

[scottlowther]

Would you be including current ideas on stuff like exotic power generation (by that, I mean matter/antimatter, miniature controlled black holes, etc.) and possible faster-than-light drives?

Yes. My plan is to include *everything* that might reasonably be contemplated for a science fictional spaceship, from bronze-age tech (someone with bronze tech and modern physics *knowledge* could build a spacecraft... not a good one, but a workable one) to modern tech to the most advanced theoretical stuff.

[scottlowther]

Unless you already deleted them for the good of humanity like I did with this novel I wrote in my teens.

Most of what I still have exists only on 15-20 year old dot matrix printouts. Since most of what I wrote fictionwise was actually written *for* someone else (*hint), much of what I wrote is not in my possession, and what is really kinda sucks. The world is full of misery as it is without me adding to it.


In recent years I've taken a stab at writing fiction again, so far without success, but not as horrible as the early stuff... just never *finished.* I wrote a half dozen (IIRC) pages of what was supposed to be at most a half-page little snippet illustrating the USAF's 4,000 ton Orion battleship in action (written for the final Orion article for Aerospace Projects Review), and I got several pages into a shortish story that, perhaps ironically, made important use of a totally bullcrap sci-fi starship propulsion system. However, I just can't seem to gin up the enthusiasm to finish fiction anymore. Non-fiction, sure, but fiction... meh.


*Hint: I could've really used Volume 5.