How did you handwave artificial Gravity?

[Connor MacLeod]

I've mentioned this to Stark before, but I have the feeling some writers think 'realism' equates to 'internal consistency'. I can grasp that some readers/fans of western sci fi often dislike how 'irrational' it can be - dealing with stuff like Star Wars or Trek (or even 40K) can be incredibly frustrating. But there are LOTS of different ways one can interpret things to 'make sense', and not all of them have to do with one kind of realism or another (scientific realism, military 'realism', whatever.)

I think we sometimes forget that the shit being designed is being made by humans (read: intelligent monkeys) and its quite possible (and even plausible) for things to be done in stupid or even inefficient ways.

I've also run across a few people on Spacebattles who have said the reason they obsess over detail like this is that they don't want some other nitpicky nerd coming in going LOLWRONG and then criticizing the way they did shit because it does not conform to some arbitrary set of stnadards a bunch of other nerds decreed as the truth.

tl;dr: I guess we need a great many fewer absolutes in sci fi and a realisation that shit can be alot more relative than we might figure. I mean there's no real CANON, and its not religion.. and there's no Nerd Moses who came down with the Ten Commandments of Sci fi saying THOU SHALT NOT USE SPACE FIGHTERS or STEALTH IN SPACE IS FORBIDDEN.

There's a really good example of this over on SB actually going right now that Ford is involved in, and it has this guy who wants to put shields in his story. but apparently he can't simply decide 'I want shields' and puts them in, he has to do this in some sort of quasi-REALISTIC manner that has all these involved explanations of the mechanisms and shit. And it apparently has become so habitual that its actually interefered with his ability to write the story. Which to me says you're probably overdoing the realism bit, and shows why excessive attention to detail can be bad.

[Batman]

Well I've never had a real setting of my own but for the BattleTech meets WingCommander sertup I'm parking one of my current shipbuilding projects in, the 'how' is 'somehow', and the limit is 'can't go beyond 1.5 gs linear without messing up the direction of the ship's artificial gravity' because I didn't feel that despite the NAIS finally having come through on their promise of true artificial gravity, they shouldn't have come too far with that.

[Formless]

I think that if you want to learn how to make your fiction feel more real, you really ought to first learn the fundamentals of writing and really get a good grasp on some things like genre, POV, and scope. Then read some fantasy literature (writing it is optional, but encouraged).

1. Almost every time I see people bring up "realism" the context seems to be military fiction, and so the worlds they create seem lifeless and uninhabited. Not everything should exist for the sake of conquest and battle even in a war story, but those are the details that get the most attention almost every time. Its a story, not Dungeons and Dragons.
2. For POV, who is telling your story, and what do they know? A commander of a large operation wouldn't know how the machines work or the fancy physics behind the bullshit-horseshit drive, but he would know how to lead people, organize projects, go to war if he's part of a military, etc..
3. On scope-- if no one in the story ever goes to Mars or needs to go to Mars, do you really need a whole dozen pages on notes on how Mars was colonized and the political issues surrounding a place no one in the story cares about?
4. As for why I suggest reading some fantasy literature, its because good fantasy writers know how to simultaneously balance large scale world building with a focus on the human elements that make readers give a shit. For me, the most unconvincing part of Star Trek that takes me out of the world isn't the bad science, its the fact that we never leave the starships to see exactly what kind of utopia the Federation is even though the characters never shut up about it. Yeah, I'm sure supposed to believe it is paradise coming from people who dedicate their lives to... staying as far away from it as possible on a mission to explore anywhere but here.

I've also run across a few people on Spacebattles who have said the reason they obsess over detail like this is that they don't want some other nitpicky nerd coming in going LOLWRONG and then criticizing the way they did shit because it does not conform to some arbitrary set of stnadards a bunch of other nerds decreed as the truth.

tl;dr: I guess we need a great many fewer absolutes in sci fi and a realisation that shit can be alot more relative than we might figure. I mean there's no real CANON, and its not religion.. and there's no Nerd Moses who came down with the Ten Commandments of Sci fi saying THOU SHALT NOT USE SPACE FIGHTERS or STEALTH IN SPACE IS FORBIDDEN.

Its a damn shame, but most of them have probably at some point or another come across Atomic Rockets. Its mostly good reference material, but it also must be noted that it has this page to set the tone for the rest of the website:

Space is three dimensional? Okay... fair enough. No sound in space? Check, that's certainly something most sci-fi fans have realized at some point. Rockets are not Fighter Planes? Uhh... okay... might be throwing some interesting themes out with the bathwater here... Its not like people do space fighters because they want to see F16's in space, its because they are romantic and shit. There Ain't No Stealth In Space. Oh screw you, Mike debunked this crap ages ago when we had that thread about the limits of sensor technology and optics. Yes, he did so in response to AR, but I'm amazed it took that long. Its a classic example of a few web-nerds taking their pet theories too seriously. Rockets Don't Got Windows ........what? The ISS absolutely has windows. The hell are you talking about? "No windows" is probably a good idea for a warship since they are a liability in a shootout, but for civilian spacecraft you are telling me no one would want at least one room with a view to relax in? Bullshit.

Good luck convincing Nyrath to clean up his site, though. For instance, even after he updated the page on defenses to admit that you can armor radiators with quartz and other transparent materials, there are still links to it elsewhere on the site claiming that you can't armor heat radiators. You just know that such a large website isn't going to get a thorough scouring by most people who go there, and who will thus come out of it with misconceptions even on topics Nyrath himself has realized he screwed up.

[Connor MacLeod]

A big part of writing I think is breaking down alot of the absolutes. Like categorization. The idea that you can put sci fi into neat, discrete categories like 'space fantasy' or 'space opera' or 'hard sci fi' or 'soft sci fi' is both arbitrary and a little silly. I mean if we go back to the last discussion of 'hard' sci fi we saw a vast range of what people considered 'realistic' - it literally ranged from 'what is likely near-future' to being 'what is permissible within the boundaries of physics' - which is actually a pretty broad category when you think about it, and the distinctions along that scale are not likely to be significant except in huge chunks (if even then.)

Heck, I've found I'm actually fond of science fiction that is daring enough to cross boundaries. One reason I've come to like Gundam is the fact the whole 'giant robot' thing defies conventional 'hard sci fi' ideas whilst still embracing a fundamentally 'hard' setting.... and doing it without sacrificing internal consistency or story. There's alot to like in that sort of set up, especailly given the fact it shares the same 'sell toys' dynamic of alot of western shit.


As far as Atomic rockets.. I like the site and Nyrath, but to be fair I sometimes think things like that are part of the problem. See, Atomic Rockets is good for getting people to think in different ways about things, sort of a reference guide. But Its also basically a site cataloguing the opinions of a bunch of other (very intelligent) sci fi nerds from USNet and a Yahoo forum, and you have to take stuff like that with a grain of salt (absolutes vs relatives again.) Alot of that stuff quite simply isn't set in stone, and if you pay attention to SFConsim at all you'll note Nyrath's site is actually more 'soft' than the current trends of 'hard' I've seen on that board. I think you could make certain parallels between Atomic Rockets and how sci fi nerds view it, and the way SWTC got viewed by SW fans during the days when the debates were more active. There's probably a certain similarity of mindset behind that, in the sense it can lead to a dangerous amount of groupthink. Nyrath need not even have intended that - in my experience sci fi geeks will always run with information in ways you never anticipate or intend. Certan parallels to my 40K junk come to mind here.

[Stark]

It isn't AR's fault that people learn that reading one source and endlessly repeating its claims are the safest way to popularity or acceptance. Nobody needs to 'clean up' their website because third parties take it the wrong way, imagine it to be written by Jesus, or whatever. Guy makes site about subject he cares about, nerd idiots latch onto it and put on the blinkers. Its an old story, and its not the fault of the person who made the site. Frankly, anyone who can read a site like AR and not think 'that's fine, but how about this' is probably on the road to narrow-mindedness already. As Connor says, its really the idea that AR is 'hard scifi' and so in any conversation about quote unquote hard scifi it is safe or acceptable or laudable to simply repeat what is on AR that is the 'problem'.

But frankly the majority of 'authors' online seem to be writing mainly or primarily for online communities of fans, rather than a broader audience, so the feedback loop probably pushes them to include the endless reams of drama-meaningless infodump worldbuilding 'look ma I cut and pasted an 'explanation' for shields from a forum thread' bullshit.

[Dominarch's Hope]

There is something to be said about GW's attitude towards canon. It doesnt interfere with making stories. Its also the most trollish I have encountered, which has been copied by Halo.


Everything is canon. If you want it to be.

My advice, to parrot but use fewer tldr inducing words, if it bothers you, just fuck it, say this is how it works and it is difficult to exploit in other ways but I cant explain it too much, because lolsuperscience, people of our time cant comprehend.

[Stark]

I think you'll find that's the equivalent of having no 'canon policy', which overall is the rule rather than the exception. 'Canon' is just one set of blinkers people use: there are all kinds.

[Lord Revan]

I've been thinking of a scifi story to write (not really gotten to the actual writing part yet though) and since none of the planned major characters are engineers or scientist I tend to go for the "it works as intended" explanation since the characters wouldn't know the details of the technology anyway, no more then a random person picked of the street would know about the tech behind large ship today beond the very basics.

After all if the exact working of a peice of tech isn't vital for the story, why would you spend time explaining that and not use that time/space for something more important to the story, say for example telling what your characters' interpersonal relationships are like.

TL:DR
Don't go into details for a peice of tech, unless the story really demands it.

[StarSword]

I think you'll find that's the equivalent of having no 'canon policy', which overall is the rule rather than the exception. 'Canon' is just one set of blinkers people use: there are all kinds.

IMHO you don't really need a canon policy unless there's multiple authors and types of works involved.

[Stark]

No, you don't need a canon policy unless fans care about 'canon' and 'truth' and shit. Heaps of collaborative works or long-running brands have no formal 'canon policy', because nobody cares about that sort of thing. It isn't the normal or regular state of being - its arguably a response to detail-obsessed continuity nerds more interested in minuatae than drama.

[Formless]

Although, if you are writing sequels or prequels to your own work, you should try to remember what you did previously so that any changes are deliberate rather than because you forgot and created a plot hole.

[Stark]

The ranking of sources in a hierarchy of truth, accuracy or validity is a bit removed from an author being consistent. If you can't even be consistent, why even care about 'canon' for the OCD crowd?

Fiction (or successful fiction) doesn't require most of the paraphenalia of nerd-pleasing nonsense people in 'vs debates' get used to. Its pretty sad that people get so focused on their own tiny niche they forget that its a really small view or attitude. Maybe 'normal people' just don't have to be told that the factually incorrect retelling of episode 9 they read on the back of a cereal box is 'non canon' before they ignore it. Taking a more fluid or consensual approach than dogmatic adherence to a slavish marketing ploy canon policy seems like an all-round better attitude.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Im guessing that the main reason certain groups want intimate details is wank about how to hack it and break the setting and look so much more brilliant than the people in universe.

[Batman]

Or maybe some people are just interested in the nuts and bolts because they like to figure out how things work. I have earlier in this thread said that I don't see why the 'how' needs to be important to the story, but just trying to find out how the hell this technology is supposed to work is a perfectly valid approach too. Some people don't give a damn about the story but are really interested in why, for example, a fusion reactor would blow up upon losing containment.

[Stark]

So they can read an *ahem* 'technical manual', the sort of non-narrative work produced for just such individuals. Hilariously, these works are one of the biggest sources of canon dispute, because they are generally either apologist and make shit up for 'realism' or hugely inconsistent with other sources... necessitating these detail-obsessed individuals who cannot engage with drama to have a canon policy.

What does it even mean to 'figure out how things work' in reference to a fictional world which does not require there actually be a reason why anything works? How does artificial gravity work in Star Trek - you guessed it, a whole load of complete horseshit technobabble that boils down to JUST... BECAUSE.

If you don't 'give a damn about the story', please stay away from discussions of stories.

[Batman]

I was trying to explain why...screw it, Stark's right. You don't care about the story, stay out of the writing threads. My apologies.

[Stark]

On the reverse side, sometimes (like the Alien franchise) the 'technical manual' stuff is better than the novels, simply by being less about horrid fanfiction and more about milhard dynasoar speculation. I imagine the balance depends on overall quality and appropriateness of speculation - if something is of high quality and very 'scifi' and distant from the real world, technical stuff is probably horrible. If something is not so good (like the reams of awful Aliens novels) or not very 'scifi' (as Aliens is near-future) the kind of HAB-wanking Janes spec-sheet reposting is probably more successful.

[open_sketchbook]

Plates made of Reverse Cavorite.

[Tethis]

As others have said I wouldn't go into a lot of detail. It will only lead to grief.

As for me, (a computer game I'm writing). I've decided on some stuff but I'm going to avoid saying much about it in-game. It's mainly to help me keep things consistent in the game. For me, the basic backstory is it's set 1200 years in the future and humanity has a Unified Field Theory which explains all the forces of nature. Much like the formulation of the old Maxwell Equations led the way to modern day electronics by manipulating electrodynamic forces, comparable equations for quantum gravity have led to some ability to manipulate it to some degree including artificial gravity.

Keep in mind that once you have artificial gravity not only can the characters walk around without floating away, they may also have something like inertial compensation as well. This means you can accelerate your ship much faster then one or two g without crushing the occupants.

But again, my explanation is really for my own use to help me put together a consistent universe. By writing it out I've realized that artificial gravity as I'm using it has other consequences and I've included those consequences in the game.