Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Do you care about nitrogen narcosis or pressure in deep water? The effects of different gravity levels or how time passes during faster than light travel?

How about breeding between two different species, or viruses and bacteria having no trouble with alien hosts.

If you're broken down into molecules for travel, do you die?

I'm wondering how much time to spend on getting the details accurate if they're not especially important to a plot, and if they even matters to most readers if the other story elements are good.

Yes. The less realistic the supposedly real-world universe is, the less immersive and more amateurish the writing comes off as.

Really depends on how far in the future and the overall vibe. Unless you're going for hard sci fi or some other situation where the how matters to the plot, you can find a happy middle ground where you acknowledge a thing and then handwave it with vague technology in the same sentence.

Or just go full pulpy space opera, or set up some other conceit. Aphrodite's Orphan is one of the best stories on the site, and it's set on Venus as imagined in the 1930s.

You are in control of your setting, you can swing your dick around and say that's just how it is if it's important enough to the plot. "In this world the glands of cosmic squid are harvested to fuel warp engines." Is some reader going to try and tell you that cosmic squids don't work that way? Based on what?

Should the character have knowledge of the science or no? If your character has a background that allows them to know these details, then it makes sense for them to pass on what they know to the reader. If not, then leaving it abstract should be fine.

Conversely, if you want the readers to know about the technical stuff, make your narrator or a supporting character technically knowledgeable and provide exposition through their POV.

Regardless, as an author, you should know how your world works. The more detailed, the better. You should also remember that you don't necessarily need to express everything you know about the world to your readers. Stick to what is relevant to the plot and make sure that knowledge is being delivered by someone who has reason to know said knowledge.

That's my style of writing anyway.

It depends what the author promises. If I read a hard sci-fi novel, and the author makes a basic physics mistake I will not take it kindly. But if the premise is wild I am happy to roll with it. I think the best, most enjoyable SciFi asks you to suspend your disbelief with regards to one fact and then rigorously explores the consequences. Here is a mini review of some stereotypical examples:

Katya's world presents itself as a hard SciFi on a water planet where the whole action is happening on submarines. Deep in the water is a layer where some very heavy mineral is suspended in the water making it even a lot more heavier than water already is. Inevitably the protagonists submarine sinks into to this 'soup' as we approach the great showdown -- absolutely sucks. How can it do this? A submarine is more or less neutrally buoyant in water. It cannot sink into a liquid that is much heavier than water, it would just bob on top of it like a balloon. Ruined the otherwise good book for me.

Gideon the ninth -- the tagline for this one is "Lesbian necromancers in space," and that's what you get (though the lesbian bit is very much between the lines). A wild story where whole planets get murdered and cruise through space as zombies (not their population, the planet itself). No issues with this -- big fan.

Project Hail Mary makes one assumption: A unicellular lifeform that is very much like plankton has evolved a way to interact with neutrinos (particles that interact with almost nothing). That's it. The rest is rock solid science, and the learning about the consequences and the way they are studied is fascinating. Real physics problems and their solutions add so much surprise to the plot.

In conquest born is grimdark social fiction, set for convenience in a SciFi world. Here the point is to explore how society can work and technology takes a backseat. The author stays honest and never abuses technology as a miracle solution for plot problems -- excellently done.

The Rig. This one seems to be very popular with reviewers recently. Now if I open a book titled 'the Rig' I expect that the action takes place on a rig of some sort and that science and technology play a big role. The book has some nice writing, but the author displays a disdain for science and the plot is so thin that it can slip through the gaps between atoms (moreover the rig is noticably absent for most of the book and when it shows up, it has the vibes of next-gen startrek, rather than a grimy drilling platform). The author probably thinks of this as social fiction, but it doesn't live up to this as consequences of social constructs are never explored beyond the blatantly obvious -- sucks.

What are the characteristics of a zombie planet and how do you destroy its brain?

Somehow the necromancers have discovered how to kill the planet, in wild Gaia-hypothesis way. Once the planet dies the microbes die within a view hours then everything else just follows in a matter of days. The planet is then settled by nasty dead things and wanders space, looking for other things to destroy.

On the positive side of things you can use the planets lifeforce to say revive plants or even stars dying from other causes.

Which leaves the problem of getting rid of the zombie planet. In principle you can lure the planet into a kind of purgatory / parallel world called 'the river'. At the bottom of the river the planet might be sucked into a parallel world to god knows where. (Spoiler: God doesn't actually know where. Also god is called the Necrolord prime is 10,000 years old and used to be a laid-back Australian professor who invented necromacy)

In any case, I really recommend this series. It is mind-bendy with incredible what-the-fuck moments. It can also get pretty confusing at times, but in the end it all makes sense and is actually very clever. Also all books in the series are very different, which adds greatly to the fun. Each of the three books out so far has a different female protagonist who tells her part in the overarching story (and they see the world very differently). The final one will hopefully be published this year.

For me realism is absolutely critical for sci-fi. I want to punch the tv every time I hear sounds in space, for example. But every time a space shot is quiet, I shed a tear of joy. The use of rotation to simulate gravity in Interstellar made me gasp. When I saw that they put in gravitational time dilation, I nearly exploded in ecstasy—and it made me forgive the weird, somewhat implausible ending (although the inside of a black hole is a mystery, so I gave it a pass).

Granted, as Mizal suggested, the further you go into the future the closer technology and magic appear, but there needs to be some sort of plausible scientific explanation for anything that is seen for me, either in the lore or directly explained.

EDIT: Fabrikant's post made me rethink this. I had forgotten about premise fiction (or absurdist fiction, or whatever the term is): where you take one ludicrous proposal and explore the results. But my original post applies for anything presenting itself as realistic. Genre blending is another exception. I don't mind Star Wars for the magic, for example, but the space sounds do piss me off.

A good balance I find when it comes to science fiction is to only really talk about the how and why when you're confident in them and to otherwise don't muddle the waters with pseudo science. Pressure in the depths? Our suits are designed to deal with that! Different gravity? We've been living in space for centuries now, a quarter of a G less/more is the new jet lag we adjust to with our bio-engineered bodies. You mean whenever I teleport I get blown up into molecules? Damn I sure those eggheads who invented it know what they're doing.

What I mean is that unless it's crucial to the plot, or you really want to flex your knowledge it is better to not go too deep. Ignorance to how things work is probably the biggest step towards realism. Just like how you don't think how exactly you can send text and files through this nebulous thing called internet Mr. Smith isn't going to care much how his spaceship capable to roughly 20000c that he gets to work with functions.

Ignorance also brings mystery, which can be a lot of fun.