a science fiction glossary? or book?

S

shamguy4

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2007
Messages
449
I am writing a fantasy that takes place in another world and its very futuristic, which is cool and great. There's magic and all, except I don't know a lot about how science fiction stuff work. I am not crazy about science fiction, my book just happened this way.

I mean I love star wars, but not enough to tell you what hydraulics are, or ion thruster thingys… or tractor beams? I know these things vaguely.
LOL, I know a lot about lightsabers, the crystals in them and the force. Cause I like fantasy and magic.

So I started making up my own elements and my own weapons and what not. But I think it would be good if there was like a free glossary or even better a book with pictures I could take out to learn about what is common in the science fiction world, how people expect it to work and if I can use it in my story with copyright issues.
 
I would personally recommend just general reading around the genre - understanding the different "flavours" of sci fi - such as hard, soft, cyberpunk, steampunk etc.

Remember there is little reason for you to follow the same conventions as other writers, for example Tractor Beams (beams which pull things to them) do not necessarily need to be called Tractor Beams - this is just the arbitrary name, the technology is speculative so you can be speculative too.

In terms of specific phrases there are some things which are science and some which are science fiction. Hydraulics for example is very much a science, Tracor beams on the other hand are speculative science fiction.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1154287.The_Encyclopedia_of_Science_Fiction may be a good place to start - if I remember correctly this book is a huge AZ of SF terminology. Alternatively http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195305678.001.0001/acref-9780195305678 has something to start with.

I would say in this instance - if you really do want to have solid sci-fi elements then there is nothing better then exposure and reading around the genre.

If you need help with anything specific I am sure people around these parts would help - seems like a great and friendly site.
 
Thanks. I'll check out the links.
I have read some. I tried reading dune... I guess I need magic to be involved I dunno..

Anyway they don't always explain how this stuff works. It's more like:
"Hydraulics engaged!" She yelled as she pulled a large lever down sending the ship plummeting forward.

See I don't even know if that made sense! I just like the word!

There's just this unspoken knowledge people I feel have on this subject.
My fear is I once wrote a little story and someone told me my plasma weapon didn't make sense and it can't possibly do whatever it did.
I made it up. But apparently in science fiction you can't just make it up!

My story is definitely not conventional. It's a small galaxy with only a few realms as I call it. There isn't really space travel as they now can teleport.

If grandma needs some eggs from the store halfway across the galaxy it's quite easy to get there and back in time for lunch.
 
Of course you make things up in Science Fiction - otherwise it would be science!

Clarke said: "Sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic."

If the tech in your SF is not crucial to the story - other than enablement then you have no need to *try* and explain it - after all, that sort of science doesn't exist anyway.

If you are writing teleportation into your SF then it sounds like "soft" SF which means you don't have to explain anything beyond some pseudo jargon. If you are breaking the laws of physics anyway I wouldn't worry too much.

My advice would be to get someone with a solid SF background to check your drafts for anything which may be jarring or plain wrong. Whilst you don't need to explain the SF element - if you do it needs to at least be plausible.

I would be happy to help with any specifics - I am fairly well read and have some knowledge of the science behind the fiction - not as much as other posters on here though!

Welcome to PM me.

EDIT: I use way too many hyphens - should try and cut down - no - really!
 
I write mostly fantasy but I sometimes dabble in science fiction too. I picked up a lot of used books from the children's reference book area. This irritates me that reference books aimed at children are the best starting-off point if you want a general knowledge of how things work. They are clearly laid out. They have big illustrations. Things like the water-evaporation cycle, what is inside a volcano, how are metals mined and refined, etc. There was a series of Time-Life books and also the Eyewitness Books series and something like How Things Work.

I'm not saying to stop at children's reference books, but it gives you an idea of where to pursue further research. Yes, you're writing fiction and there is a lot of room to play. That said, many of the readers in this genre -- and some of the authors -- have a background in actual science so you need to be careful about throwing around terms like plasma without thinking it through. I am acquainted with an SF author who worked for years at a laboratory doing things with lasers, and he knows EXACTLY what a "laser" can and cannot do. Another example is a guest of honor at this year's Worldcon, Kjell Lundgren who is an astronaut currently deployed on the International Space Station, and he reads science fiction.
 
As long as the names you write have a purpose, you'll be fine :) A hydraulic is doing something. Just because hydraulic servos do things a certain way in our world, doesn't mean they do the same in yours, so it's perfectly up to you. Lucas called them Light sabres, not Coherent light emitters, after all ;)

In my (only) sf, I have Sling Probes, Disruptors, Fringes, Causeway Bunkers, MSL (military sign langauge) and Vigil. None of them are real, really, but so what. I hop I've written it in a way that maks it clear what each of these things is.

pH
 
What you need to look into is space fantasy (look away @Venusian Broon :)) which are, essentially fantasy stories set in space. There is no problem writing them , it is an established genre (my first book, Abendau's Heir, skates the sf edge of it). In such stories, you don't need to go into the tech - there are established norms. It's enough eg to say your ship has a faster-than-light drive without explaining how it works.

So, don't worry. But do explore the genre a little more to know what you can do. There's plenty out there - Dune, you've mentioned (although it's more sf than space fantasy), the whole Star Wars universe is probably the best eg of space fantasy, in terms of exposure, but something like Guardians of the Galaxy falls under it.

And go forth and enjoy it. That's what space fantasy is about - enjoying the freedom, and pure escapism.

(A glossary would mean nothing to me, btw.)

Edit - but if you're going to mention hydraulics engaged, you should perhaps know what hydraulics are vaguely for. Vaguely... :)
 
I second what Denise says about starting research in the non-fiction section of the children's library when you have little or no grasp of a particular subject. I've been doing that for years. As she says, it gives you an idea of where you need to do further research (and gives you a basic understanding so that you won't be utterly lost if you do) but also books written for children can give you the kind of concrete specific details that you can use in your book. Also, more pictures(!) so that you know what the thing you are talking about looks like.
 
Your average reader is not a scientist and even those who are won't always be in the right field to know everything about everything. So a lot of science fiction is fantasy.

The key is to realise that the technology that runs sci-fi is rather like magic in fantasy for most readers; its not so much how or why it works that is important; but what its effect is within the story and the fact that it obeys rules that govern its running and thus allow the reader to understand events as they unfold when they use themes introduced to them before.

Of course the more your readers get into something and the more you write the more you might need to flesh out ideas and concepts; that's where your early research comes in. Do enough so that you can expand upon and explain your science to a point where it makes sense - that it has a foundation to expand from.


A lot also depends on the language you choose; some sci-fi writers are ALL About technical details and linking it into hard (real) science. They often focus on that element in the descriptive text. Meanwhile others can be at the totally opposite end dealing more with the effect and consequences of technology and its use - ergo what it does - rather than why or how it does what it does.

Consider Star-Wars - most people have no idea how a lightsabre works; they only need to know that it slices through practically anything that isn't another lightsabre. And that's all they need to know; indeed even the science behind it is sketchy and only roughly put together and mostly relies upon special crystals and focusing elements.
 
shamguy4 said:
I don't know a lot about how science fiction stuff work
Click to expand...

IMO it's not science fiction, but science itself, that you need to learn and research. A simple way to do this could be to subscribe to New Scientist magazine - their news section is a great way to learn about different fields, and our current understanding of them, in a short and concise way. They're written for a general reader, too. They have a number of free news items on their website, so might be worth starting to read around those first:
https://www.newscientist.com/section/news/
 
Brian Turner said:
IMO it's not science fiction, but science itself, that you need to learn and research
Click to expand...
Absolutely. There is a lot of supposed SF that's not really SF at all, just Magic in Space or Magic in the Future.

Also Logic, Mathematics, Engineering.
Even Fantasy works best if internally logical.
Unless the SF is of the purely fantastical / whimsey end of space opera / humour / satire then at least it shouldn't obviously contradict mathematics and especially logic. They are not going to change. Most of known physics and chemistry isn't going to change.

If you decide to do properly "Hard SF" then you need to research any idea to college level as primary and secondary texts or illustrated books for children may actually have "Lies for Children" or old misconceptions.
Examples:
Filament Light bulbs have a vacuum: Mostly untrue for nearly a 100 years.
Atoms are like little solar systems with Electrons Orbiting the nucleus of Protons and Neutrons: Untrue. Even the "shell" description is very misleading. The Electrons' position is described by a wave function and has a probability of being at a particular place.
We have no idea what gravity is or how it's propagated. We can calculate the attractive force between two masses at a particular distance or how much a mass of a particular density bends passing light (or radio waves). We have no idea why, either in Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, though there are some weird theories.
Evolution says nothing about origin of Life itself, or the Universe. Nor does it imply machines, computer programs, biological organisms get more advanced. It's about how biological entities can change.
Artificial Intelligence doesn't mean what most SF books and popular press suggests. Today A.I. is about better ways to search a database to identify real world objects (images), or answers to a question from the data. No-one is actually researching AI in the Star Trek Data or Asimov "Positronic Brain" sense as we don't even know how to start. The "Singularity" and "self emergent machine intelligence" are not really SF, or Iain M. Banks "AI" but pure fantasy, akin to princes turning into frogs. Calling it A.I. research is marketing. It's just regular computer programming and databases.

A. C. Clarke (or someone like him) suggested it was fine to put one or two totally imaginary & unlikely things in real S.F. If in fact almost all the tech is so unlikely to be really contravening basic logic, mathematics and most existing science, then it's actually not really SF at all, but Fantasy. A lot (but not all) of Space Opera is like this.

Time travel is more Fantasy than SF, as logic suggests it's impossible. But there are lots of fun and/or good Time travel stories.

FTL (Faster Than Light) travel is probably impossible in the normal sense, but we aren't stuck at Light Speed Ships (which would take no time to travel for occupants, but same time as light for external observers) or Generation ships for Space Travel. Space Opera doesn't explain it or worry about it at all. There are though three main Mathematics/Physics ways to get space ships from A to B faster than light without actual FTL travel (which is impossible). Some kind of Warp Drive, Wormholes or some other unspecified way of "folding space", like a walkway across the top of two skyscrapers instead of travelling via the ground. It's best to not explain it and only use it as any existing theory for Warp Drive or Wormholes needs materials that might not exist and infeasible amounts of energy (as much or more than entire visible universe).

Explain nothing, then people can more easily suspend disbelief. All the best SF is about people. How the people react, develop, cope, relate etc. So in a sense if Space Opera isn't Samuari or Cowboys or Detectives & Criminals or Spy Story in space, it's merely boring technobable. People don't want to know how a light sabre works, they want the farm boy that's really a lost prince to succeed in fighting the evil warrior-wizard. Star Wars and Star Trek lost credibility when they started to "explain" stuff in the films / shows.

A contemporary set thriller doesn't stop to explain how a car or aeroplane works (unless maybe some sort of technical sabotage is important to the plot), the writer researches what an Airbus 380 can do, the places, the injuries, medicine etc. Build up a reference library. That's what many good non-SF writers have done. Have organised book marks. Have a folder structure on computer and "Save Website Complete as HTML" so you can have it if it's removed from internet and easy fast search / edit and organise even offline. You can't rely on websites keeping content or even continuing to exist.
 
Treatment of space travel is one of the most obvious suspensions of disbelief I have to make when reading space opera: specifically ignoring relativistic effects of time travel.

FTL travel is essentially time travelling.
 
Ok so what I am walking away with, is that I should learn at least something more about terms if I plan to use them.
The thing is I sometimes don't even know the term exists. Thats why I wanted a scifi glossary of famous terms.

The only reason I know what a tractor beam is, is because I once asked a friend how would someone attack and board a ship in outer space. He says it happens in star wars, then began to tell me how you would use a tractor beam to pull it in and then use some sort of tube to smash in and walk across.
Apparently the tube smashes in perfectly somehow and no holes are made exposing the void.

Oh yeah whats it called when you pressurize a room after its been exposed? See I have watched and read how the room filled with air, but I don't know the terminology.

No idea what hydraulics are.
FTL still isn't warp speed right? FTL lets you travel pretty fast but you would still need some sort of warp speed to get to another solar system fast? How long would the trip take from one end of the milky way to the other? In star wars they never mention how long it takes. They just have some cutscenes and viola! they have arrived… or are stuck with no fuel of course.

In my universe I have teleporting. I have portals and huge portals that ships can go through. It was my way of solving a few issues. One was travel and I want sure how to deal with it. The other was the ability to "catch" someone. Using the portals automatically makes you traceable as everyone going through one is tagged.
 
Derail, but regarding light sabres I think that they would be much better called plasma sabres. It even sounds just as cool! The observed characteristics fit much better with a confined plasma than light. For a start, one can't see a light beam from the side.

To the OP - I think two sites might be useful for info. The first is Atomic Rockets - I warn in advance that it tends to get a bit technical. Despite the name, it discusses other SF technologies as well. And the other, for amusement and perspective, is TV Tropes. ;)
 
Unless you are going to write at the pure fantasy/soft space opera, magic in a Technobabble wrapping, then a decent basic knowledge of logic, mathematics, science and technology is important or else the SF will just seem childish and stereotypical, culled from all the worst gaffes in TV programs and Films that are only called SF as they fit badly anywhere else. What can be acceptable to TV/Film audience is often less acceptable in a book. Books don't depend on CGI and cinematic action. ST TNG etc translate badly to books for avid SF readers.

Very many of the "Golden Age" SF writers were also Chemists, Engineers, Scientists, Astronomers, Technical Journalists etc, not Arts Graduates. Even if sometimes they ignored the science they knew to have some mcguffin or plot point.
 
But if the OP is happy writing what they're writing, why do they need to do any hard research? It's not a test is it? Why does sci-fi have to be so prescriptive (or proscriptive - I never know which one is right)? Are we such snobs that we can't enjoy sff like SW anymore?

Who needs to know how a pod racer would or wouldn't work. Nobody questions the improbability of a Krayt monster attaining such size or how and amphibious creature like Jar Jar can exist. Why is biology exempt and science not?

Think of other speculative genres; there is no science to prove the supernatural exists but a huge amount of the global population believe in it, in the absence of everything but anecdotal evidence and pure faith, and in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary.

pH
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
paeng How Judy-Lynn del Rey shaped science fiction as we know it today Classic SF&F 2
D Your top 3-5 favorite Science-fiction writers currently? Book Discussion 7
B In All of Science Fiction And Fantasy Whom Do You think Are The Most Powerful And Ascendant Beings and Entities? SFF Lounge 3
Robert Zwilling Different Science Fiction Books That Got The Same Cover Art 7
bretbernhoft Processed 111 popular science fiction stories from the Gutenberg Project, for the top 2,000 two-word phrases. And then visualized it as a word cloud. SFF Lounge 11

Similar threads


Back
Top