Authors using made up technology across different books/series?

[jheft28]

I'm assuming this is a thing, but I'm curious what sci-fi authors have made up technology in one of their books that they use in some/all other books? I'm not looking for books in the same series, but like an author who uses invention x across different stories/worlds/universes he or she has created. Author names and specific book example are much appreciated!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

rare I think ...

 

[galanx]

Other than generic "blasters" or "force-fields"; Heinlein uses "torch-ships" in several of his juveniles.
Farmer in the Sky; Time for the Stars; Double Star; mentioned in Tunnel in the Sky as being made obsolete by the Gates.

He was also fond of spaceships shaped like light-bulbs.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm assuming this is a thing, but I'm curious what sci-fi authors have made up technology in one of their books that they use in some/all other books? I'm not looking for books in the same series, but like an author who uses invention x across different stories/worlds/universes he or she has created. Author names and specific book example are much appreciated!

Welcome to chronicles! However, you're question does seem a little generic - most SF I've read uses its own rules of acceptable technology, and applies them across the author's books. It could be anything from FTL drives common in military SF, to the presence of space satellites that Arthur C Clarke first came up with.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm not a hundred percent sure of this, but I think there might be one example: I seem to recall a thank you from Orson Scott Card to Ursula K. Le Guin for creating the ansible, a device she had "invented" for interstellar communications and which he appropriated (again, as I recall) for the Ender novels.


Randy M.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Lois Bujold introduced the "uterine replicator" in Falling Free. It is then taken for granted in later Vorkosigan books. Miles would not exist without it. Her wormhole physics is a prominent aspect of the Komarr novel. The cryonic storage is central to Mirror Dance and Cryoburn though mentioned in other stories.

Technologies are consistent thru the Honorverse though technologies evolve and get added.

psik

 

[hitmouse]

FTL travel already mentioned
Teleportation
Antigravity
Wormholes/Portals
Lightsabres
Zero point energy generators
Ringworlds
Dyson spheres
Inertialess drives
The Lens
Brain jacks/computer interfaces of various sorts
Suspended animation for interstellar travel
Sentient computers
Hardlight holograms
Ten point steel
Force fields/tractor beams
etc

 

[iansales]

Le Guin's ansible is the classic example of a made-up device which she not only uses in her Ekumen novels and, I think, some unrelated stories, but also been used by other writers.

However, the grandaddy of them all is Karel Čapek's coining of the word "robot".

 

[Bick]

The OP was asking for devices used by the same author in different universes. None of the answers given demonstrates that yet. Bujold's replicators are all same universe. Use of ansibles by different authors are not by the same author in different settings, though Le Guin may have used them widely. I think genuine examples are probably thin on the ground.

 

[galanx]

Are you saying all Heinlein's juveniles are in the same universe? (though Double Star is not a juvie, if I remember correctly) I know he (and Asimov) retconned his earlier stuff, but that doesn't count to me.

"Famer in the Sky" has Chief Engineer Ortega explaining the engine to the BSG (Boy Scouts of Ganymede) and though "Tunnel in the Sky" refers to "Ortega torchships" it's clear from "Farmer" she didn't invent them.

 

[Serendipity]

I am currently writing two novels about the Solar System, but where there has been a split in the technology developed - a crucial one which makes for two very interesting universes in their own right. My experience is that the older technology in both universes are one and the same. The new technology is different.

I think it is quick likely the same will have happened to other science fiction writers, past and present.

Hope this comment helps.