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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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I've got a problem that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere, and I need help with it.
I'm writing stories (The Integrator, Shortfall) set four hundred years in the future. There have been so many changes - from Hawking Bridges which link to other worlds, to the domestication of insects, to cognitive enhancements for humen and
homin, etc. - that it is a problem to convey them without heaps of
blatant exposition. Part of the difficulty is to fashion a
shared consciousness of the changes in my characters and to convey the
differences that way. After all, the characters take the changes for
granted - although my readers can't.
I recognize that this world-building problem is a general one which every writer has to solve somehow, so I hope someone can offer suggestions about how to get across some specific conceits in my stories.
Suppose that every human being carries a copy of a virtually infinite, shared database about the world. This "worldview" contains literally everything that is publicly known. The interface to this facility is so well-integrated that using it is very much like the act of remembering is for us today, except much, much better. In particular, a person doesn't have to do anything consciously in order to access the worldview.
Can you suggest a scene or a bit of dialog to communicate such a thing? I want to avoid using the words shared distributed database
which automatically tends to majority-based consistency.
Here's a similar problem: the new worlds in my stories are very Earth-like, with the exception that there are no intelligent inhabitants. Nobody knows why. Heck, nobody even knows where these planets are.
How much do I have to say about these problems? So far I have not explained anything. My characters just accept the facts as I have stated them. But how to get such things across to readers?
If you've dealt with similar issues, I'd like to hear how you did it.
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Joined: 4/9/2012
Posts: 1
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Hi, I’m Pong Sennit, navigator extraordinaire of the infamous racing yacht Badaud, if I must say so myself. I’m the one fidgeting under the sil-diamond navigation port, a solar map in one hand, adjusting the sextant with another and holding an array of sphisium timing bars in another while straining to see the screen showing flux density and the relative orbits of our competitor’s yachts. Hi Mr. Tucker, The above long sentence opens a short story concerning a three armed navigator in a sailing spaceship. Instead of a tedious description, I let the tale and let the reader's imagination fill in the details.
I'm sure your interpretation of a tentacled man/machine washing dishes is different from mine. I am content to let you, the reader, paint the background with minimum brushstrokes while I drive the race around unfriendly planetoids, Dr. Who's police box and tiny black holes.
Give the reader lumber, nails and a hammer. You unfold the blueprint as necessary.
Just sayin'.
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Joined: 1/31/2012
Posts: 16
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Speaking specifically of your "infinite, shared database," the best thing to do is simply have your characters access it. Perhaps the best thing is not to have it too well-integrated, so that a very short pause, or an eyeblink, or some better conceit intimates to the reader that the speaker has consulted some unseen source. If your reader has been introduced to a world as advanced as you say (and I find some of those concepts quite intriguing), he will understand quickly that a world-wide "mental internet" is being used.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Brian,
This is an example of the problem I face. Here, the protagonist (Django Boldt) "remembers" a fact by finding it in the worldview. What can I say instead of "saw"?
I want simultaneously to communicate the unconscious nature of the awareness, and to avoid exposition, and, since such events occur more or less continuously, to avoid tiresome repetition.
"I've made lapsang souchong," Oxenstone said. He clapped his hands. A macaque came in with a pot and two teacups on a lacquered tray, and the fragrance of the black Terran tea made Boldt's mouth water. The monkey put the tray with the pot on the table and poured without a word, keeping his eyes down, and then he withdrew to the kitchen. Oxenstone may not be Terran but he's got Terran manners, thought Django Boldt. He saw that the man lived in a tiny village at Fauteuil and commuted to New Berkeley for his job.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 88
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Hey Philip,
My book on this site, The Ravelled Sleave of Care, is one long laboratory experiment in doing just what you're talking about. I've written it in the mode of a "roman a clef" about the Police Dept. in 2109. Kind of an insider account of what's going on "in the belly of the beast." The reader is "presumed" to be from the book's time and so I can't have perfectly commonplace things explained at length.
It helps that I really enjoy reading books from other times--the past of course--and having to gestalt a lot of whats going on from context and just let some things go without understanding them. Just knowing that I have this privileged glimpse into another world is exciting to me.
I'm trying to recreate that quality in my book. I choose to drop the reader into the middle of things and try to keep things as emotionally compelling while they suss out what's going on technologically and socially.
One thing to do is have your technology break down/malfunction. Then your character has every reason to talk about how it's *supposed* to work. In good SF, it's not hard to make the central control mechanisms of society breaking down a theme of the book. Also, it's a good idea to have a character who works "in the industry" who will necessarily talk about current developments in the technology, etc.
A lot can be accomplished with the right neologism. "Worldview" is a great, evocative word for the tech you're talking about. As for a word to replace "saw" you just have to come up with something that the reader could more or less easily translate to "saw" but that tips us off to the new technology. So, I'm thinking...worldview...wv...dub-vee...dub? "He dubbed that the man lived in a tiny village...?" Or maybe "world" as a verb? "He worlded that the man lived..." Or more subtly, "He viewed that the man lived..." Dub-viewed?
Anyway, just remember to have fun with it and hopefully that fun will translate to the reader. Good luck!
-Kevin
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• After all, the characters take the changes for granted - although my readers can't. Why not? It’s our job to make it real. John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog magazine for decades, had a rule: Each story should be written as if it appeared in a magazine in the society in which the story is set. Thus a futuristic romance must be written as if it was to appear in, True Romance Magazine, in that society. Never try to impress your reader with the gee-whiz aspect of the society. What made the first Star Trek episode groundbreaking was that the technology was just there. The characters paid no more attention to the transporter than we do to an elevator. Star Wars took that a step further. The Millennium Falcon was obviously old and worn.
If your characters have computer assisted memories then they do. If you want the reader to know that, so they don’t think the character has a magic memory, have him recognize a momentary delay, perhaps comment on the network being unusually busy. Remember, you, personally aren’t telling a story to the reader, you’re inviting them to live it along with the character. So you explain damn little. You show it happening in context by placing the reader in the character’s POV rather then yours. Sit your reader in the character’s head and let them view the world through what the character is focused on, moment-by-moment. Look at the paragraph you put in:
"I've made lapsang souchong," Oxenstone said. He clapped his hands. A macaque came in with a pot and two teacups on a lacquered tray, and the fragrance of the black Terran tea made Boldt's mouth water. The monkey put the tray with the pot on the table and poured without a word, keeping his eyes down, and then he withdrew to the kitchen. Oxenstone may not be Terran but he's got Terran manners, thought Django Boldt. He saw that the man lived in a tiny village at Fauteuil and commuted to New Berkeley for his job. It’s a report. It’s focused on events and facts, not on what the character is paying attention to. You open with a character making a statement, and the one thing we know is that the one he’s speaking to is thinking about how to respond, why it was mentioned, and other aspects of the conversation. The business with the monkey was just to impress the reader because neither of them would pay it more attention than a waiter bringing tea in our society. Present what the protagonist is paying attention to, not what you find interesting.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Kevin, thanks for the ideas. In fact, just asking the question about what to say instead of "see" helped me see (well) a way out. I think I may go with the verb "to mem".
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Kevin,
I find it frustrating to use this site sometimes. I can't find Ravelled Sleave. Is it still available?
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Kevin,
Duh. I found it.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Kevin,
Ah yes, I've read some of your book.
My own approach is more muted wrt tech and so on. I want it to be much less visible in my story than you do in yours, I think. I want it to be hidden in the mundane.
For example, you have a whisper rig (nice name!). My characters have a limited ability to "ping" one another in order to communicate, but it's all supported by the built-in tech they have, and not available to fingers or even conscious willful action. They just do it. I'm trying to figure out how to communicate the limits of the facility (it's range-limited, relayed person-to-person (but without knowledge of the relayers!) and pretty much limited to "voice." Overall, it's much less of a problem for me than the worldview.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Jay,
Thanks for the comments.
A word about the example: it's only a paragraph, excerpted from a longer scene in a chapter.
And the whole book is about the monkeys, in a way. There is a conflict between Earth, where homin slavery is still practiced, and New Berkeley, where the paragraph is set.
I agree about the rust on the tech. That impressed me so much when I saw Star Wars that I have never forgotten it.
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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In general, one of the really great ways to demonstrate something is to have someone 'oppose' it. For example, your universal access thingy: what if you have a character who's allergic to it? You've instantly got that definition, because you've got one character having to use a 'crutch' to stay equal with the other characters.
Doing something like this can help define any part of a setting. It's crudest form is usual the 'fish out of water' character, but you can get a lot more inventive with it than that.
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Joined: 1/31/2012
Posts: 16
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Tim,
Actually, I'm using the "fish out of water" theme for conveying exactly the same kind of process as Philip is using (a world-wide telepathic internet) in my book, "The Invisible City," which is posted here. I'd be interested in any thoughts about how well it works, since my approach is much more explicit than what Philip is trying to do.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Brian, Tim,
I've tried similar approaches. Earlier work included a character who was "asystic" - he couldn't tolerate the system enhancements common to all humen.
But I didn't succeed with him, in part because I wanted there to be so much progress that such problems would lie in the past.
I took a different approach in Shortfall. There, the beings who provide the view from the outside are the homin slaves. Since there are only two humen in the story, and so few humen left alive in general, the apes had had only rare contact with men. The protagonist of the story is repeatedly surprised at how alien they seem.
I was very pleased with that approach, but ultimately unsatisfied with it, as well. I wanted to try to write about a wider society, with more humen and their homin counterparts.
That's when I realized I could use some help.
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