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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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It's probably not a huge surprise, but most SF novels play a little fast and loose with the laws of physics as we understand them. So what's your favourite excuse for some impossible tricks like FTL or shields?
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Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
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Ack! Bumping this up!
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this would be such a great discussion. where is everybody?? 
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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Umm, my short guess is that my stunning social skills have warded everyone off. No guarantees though. It could just be no one cares.
Just to (re) kickstart the whole discussion, here's one of my favourite excuses I've dreamt up: dimensional overlay. In short, the laws of physics as we understand them are fixed and unchanging, but higher dimensions (either due to us being an extension of a five or six dimensional universe or due to us being a created 'nested' universe) can affect reality in ways that physics says should be impossible.
The alternative I kinda like from a plot sort of perspective is the paradigm shift, where the universe's rules get re-written. Whether this is due to some natural event (magic returning) or something more game-changing (the Singularity's normally a good choice), it lets you mess around with the rules without invalidating all the prior science.
So what do I think doesn't work so well? In short, the 'Einstein was wrong'. Stuff like the light-speed limit has been experimentally proven over and over again (remember the controversy when someone thought they'd broken it? Turned out to be faulty gear, nothing more) so claiming that it isn't accurate doesn't really pass the smell test. Though it's worth pointing out that there's some beginning experiments that could produce a warp drive capable of up to five times the speed of light.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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I like when they don't fully explain it. Glory Road, by Heinlein, had
"wards" which were presented like magic, but technological. They are
described as, "Like an electric fence without the fence, in the same way
that a radio is like a phone, but without wires."
The main character is unsatisfied with that answer, he just doesn't know
enough to make it work. And thats simply true. We don't KNOW enough to
make it work, once we do, it ceases to be science fiction, and is just
technological fiction.
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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I've got admit I like that phrasing: 'like X, but without Y'. It's a wonderful way of defining a new piece of technology in an understandable, but mysterious way.
One of the things I really like about Heinlein is that it never felt like his characters were visitors from our world in his. He didn't explain how stuff worked, because his characters already knew. He just noted the limitations, accepted them and then worked them into the stories.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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I just wave my hands very fast and resort to teknobabble.
In Shortfall, new worlds are reached by "Hawking Bridges". There are only a few such, and all are very earth-like, except that there are no human-intelligent inhabitants.
Why? No one knows. I wish I knew. But I've got my hands full with only one new world.
If you avert your eyes, your readers may be able to do the same. What counts is the story.
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Joined: 6/13/2012
Posts: 13
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As long as its a good story an author can throw all the laws of physics out the window and cackle classic villain style for all I care. FTL for instance. If its attached to a good story, I don't care that its not really possible. Big fan of Star Wars here, though my personal opinion is that I could have written the new trilogy better. Anyway, Garth Nix's novel A Confusion of Princes is a great example for using technology that's probably totally bogus but is presented in a way that makes it understandable and believable enough that the reader will buy it (at least I did). It's also a great story in general.
On a side note, is there any form of "fast" space travel that is actually possible, at least in theory?
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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In theory? Wormholes and warp drives are about the only ones I know of that are really plausible (in theory). Wormholes, if we ever find one/ figure out how to make them, would give us effectively point-to-point transportation, but the amounts of energy required to generate them is insane (destroy a sun levels of power). I was reading an article recently saying JPL's starting experiments on alcubierre drives, which is a form of warp space. Effectively, you don't move yourself, you move a region of space that you're in. The bad news? Theories to make it work need or produce the following theoretical items: Exotic matter (which has negative mass), naked singularities (a black hole being a bit odd) or another alcubierre drive in the first place. I'm not holding out much hope, but the universe is a funny place.
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There's interesting research going on right now about warp drives. You'd have to google to find out where, but seems like it's here in the US. Also, the British have a 'car' that might possibly go 1,000 miles per hour! Talk about breaking land speed records!
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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"On a side note, is there any form of "fast" space travel that is actually possible, at least in theory?"
There are plenty of plausible ways to get close to the speed of light, and the speed of light is very fast ... as long as you're on the ship, not at home waiting for it to go somewhere and come back.
As for FTL, my understanding is that all of the hypothetical technologies remain in the realm of science fiction -- we can imagine them, but we're several technological steps away from being able to prove or disprove their feasibility, much less actually make any of them.
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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Arguably, any drive can accelerate you up to 'near' light-speeds if you leave it on long enough, thanks to the lack of friction in space. If you left an Apollo rocket on for long enough it'd do the trick. The key word is 'long enough'. Modern rockets are huge and only run for a few minutes, ion drives can run for longer, but generate incredibly low thrusts.
One approach that's almost viable at the moment is solar sails. Keep it exposed to the Sun's light for long enough (again, this is quite a while) and it'll accelerate up to incredible speeds. Of course, it'll start up extremely slow.
The only real restriction on a vessel's speed is collisions (one reason a lot of proposed ships have massive forward shield structures), so as long as you can figure out a way to prevent impacts, you should be okay.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hi Guys,
Interesting discussion, but I wonder if you are missing the point. I don’t think Science fiction exists to predict future technology – we can’t, but to explore how humans (and of course others) will act in that future.
If you worry whether FTL drives are possible, you are stuck in the present. Let me give you some examples from Geology, a field I’m familiar with. Did you know that Lord Kelvin, the greatest physicist of the 19th century, disproved Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by clearly showing that the earth could not be more than 30 million years old? He studied the geothermal gradient (the rate at which the earth gives off internal heat), assumed the earth started as a molten ball, gradually cooling, and worked from there. His problem? He did his work about 10 years before the discovery of radioactivity. Also, early to mid-20th century geophysicists scoffed at continental drift. They knew there was no way continents could sail through the rocks of the sea floor. Now we know they don’t, they are carried along on them.
My point is simple – don’t worry about the details. You never know what’s coming down the pike. Right now it seems that we’ve reached a plateau, but then again the head of the US Patent Office in the late 19th Century wanted to close it down since everything that could be invented already had!
FTL? Warp? Hyperdrive? Call it what you will. When I go for a ride in my car with a friend we don’t talk about how the internal combustion engine works even if we are discussing the cost of fuel and its economic consequences. The exact how is unimportant. What’s important is that you produce a good, thought provoking story. And of course one that’s fun to read.
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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That's roughly what I was aiming for with the thread in the first place. When you're writing 'techy' SF, you inevitably have to get into the nuts and bolts of how it works so that you (at least) know how it all works. What I'm interested in is the excuses/ technology that people have dreamt up to allow themselves to do what they want.
For example, in one of my back-burner projects, they have what's called 'Lie-tech' which exploits a loophole in reality that the universe can't tell the difference between reality and an exact simulation. As a result, if you run two sims, the universe does what they say, not what it should do. Once you start fiddling with the physical constants, things get a little interesting.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Tom Wolosz, I tried to say something similar in an earlier comment, but of course the science has got to be in there somewhere.
It's certainly true that what matters are character and plot, not technical details. But verisimilitude matters too, and so does the need to get across a sense of a different time and place. In my story, most of the tech is biotech, and utterly, boringly familiar to its users. How then to illustrate the idea that there are vines that grow mugs? I could (and did) just say "mugvine," but I also set part of the story at Pekkeridge Pottery, a place that grows crockery commercially. There is nothing about genomes or quasi-living ceramics, but I like the not-in-Kansas-any-more effect of the great bongs and hoots that rise from the vineyards when the wind blows through them.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hi Timothy, I think the way to look at it is more a matter of set design for your story than hard science (as long as the obvious and basic stuff doesn’t get screwed up!). In my story, Agony of the Gods, I have people connect to The Machine, a construct that gives them almost limitless power. It’s kind of like Dr. Morbius from Forbidden Planet, but on steroids. I also have them travel along The Highway to get between worlds. How could this ever be done? Haven’t got a clue. But so what? I’m actually more interested in exploring the idea of giving people limitless power and their own worlds – how would they act? What would they do? So the tech stuff is there as back ground. The main thing is that you need to be consistent. Again, as I mentioned in the last post, there’s a point where too much description becomes tedious and un-natural. Consider a plot where you have a character working at a computer. Whether you describe the character working on MS Word, Fortran, C+++, or machine language depends on the story. If they’re working on Word, do we even need to mention the existence of machine language? So I think the importance of “Lie-tech” is how it sets up the plot, not how it might work.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hello Again Timothy, I had just posted my last comment when your “mugvine” comment popped up. So let me add the following answer – careful description. For example: Jason examined the mugvines. The youngest plants had just started to bear fruit, barely distinguishable from a large grape, although the handle stems were starting to form on a few. As he passed along the rows to the mature plants he smiled with pride as he saw their fruit – deep bowls and finger-hole handles fully formed and rind grown rigid. Soon they would begin to display the silvery glaze which signaled that they were ready for harvest. Pretty bad, but you get the idea.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Oops, just noticed that that last post should have been directed to Philip. Sorry guys, but you need to get a different icon.
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I ran into this just now and thought of this thread here at Book Country. Take a read:
http://www.springhole.net/writing/things-sf-writers-shoud-know-about-science.htm
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Joined: 1/19/2014
Posts: 11
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so what if I do know the physics of how a stargate works? In fact, I know how the physics work so well I can describe three totally different kinds of gates, all which operate differently, but have the same result... Even the famous stargate TV show does allot of telling rather than showing... and when they just show the gate working... well that really does not explain the physics of them.
so Here's My Question:
How can you describe these physics without taking away from the story line and taking the reader through all the high tech information?
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You can't and shouldn't, unless your protagonist needs to know in order to solve a problem. And, the reader doesn't give a damn how it works, because the user just treats it like furniture. No one explains how a celphone works when a character uses it. Nor do they tell the reader what kind of engine powers the car the protagonist is sitting in unless there's a reason they must.
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