Even Andy Weir had to fudge the science a bit to make The Martian work, and I don't know if your going to find a much more science based fictional novel than his.
Science, History and Writing for Trek
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
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Even Andy Weir had to fudge the science a bit to make The Martian work, and I don't know if your going to find a much more science based fictional novel than his.
Regrettably, I haven't used that much canon tech, etc in my stories. I did have to recall my high school science for an AR fanfic which I shall repost momentarily in the correct section of the board.
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As with all fiction, you have to be careful when it bends reality.
And Daffyduckium doesn't? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Daffyduckium
It was a visual gag on a computer display....the same sort of thing which begat a rubber ducky and a hamster on a wheel in the Enterprise-D engineering diagram. It was never meant to be used "for real" as a plot point, etc. 
On the other hand ,whenever I start to get too obsessive about getting all my facts right, I remind myself that SPIDER-MAN 2 put an elevated subway train in the middle of downtown Manhattan and nobody walked out of the theater in protest. (For the record, there haven't been any elevated subway trains downtown in decades.)
In general, you probably have more latitude with made-up science and geography than you do when dealing with real-life stuff that can be verified or disproved for real. Nobody knows for sure how time-travel works, but we do know that that New York is three hours ahead of Seattle and that most modern cars need gasoline to run. The latter is harder to fudge than warp drives or transporter beams or giant space amoebas.
In general, you probably have more latitude with made-up science and geography than you do when dealing with real-life stuff that can be verified or disproved for real. Nobody knows for sure how time-travel works, but we do know that that New York is three hours ahead of Seattle and that most modern cars need gasoline to run. The latter is harder to fudge than warp drives or transporter beams or giant space amoebas.
Except that we actually do have a pretty solid theoretical model of how time travel would work if it were possible. We have actual equations telling us how a warp bubble or a wormhole would behave -- indeed, the very concept of a wormhole emerged as a solution of the equations of General Relativity. Sure, most laypeople don't know these things, but then, most non-New Yorkers don't know what subway you'd take to get from Astoria to Times Square. But some members of the audience will know, and will notice if it's done wrong. So you have to strike a balance between doing the research to understand the subject and being flexible enough to embellish it. Putting an elevated train in Manhattan will only work if you surround it with a plausible enough version of Manhattan that people will suspend disbelief. And by the same token, knowing what physics says about time travel or FTL travel or whatever, and then adding what embellishments are necessary to make the fiction work, is (IMHO) going to give better results than just going "Oh, most people won't know the difference, so I'll just make stuff up instead of researching." That kind of thinking might produce a story where there's not only an elevated train in Manhattan, but a mountain range, palm-lined beaches, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
So you've seen RUMBLE IN THE BRONX . . ?
^Yeah, but Roddenberry also consulted with scientists and experts. He made the effort to learn the rules before deciding which ones to break or ignore. That's what made Star Trek work so much better than other contemporary SFTV shows written by people who didn't know a damn thing about their subject and didn't bother to find out. He did take a whole lot of liberties, but he grounded it in enough reality that it felt believable.
Yeah, I'm not saying otherwise. Just that science isn't the starting point.
To be clear, I'm not trying to sound too blithe about research and accuracy, scientific or otherwise. Even when one is writing technobabble or inventing an imaginary fantasy kingdom, one wants to do the homework is necessary to make whatever you're writing about sound convincing at least, and to get enough of the little details right that you don't lose the reader even before you get to the really wild stuff.
Just tonight, for example, while working on a new chapter of the Work-in-Progress, I found myself looking up Egyptian geography, 1970s newspaper comic strips, the plot of an old Jack London novel, scuba gear, smoking jackets, and the use of Mother Goose in traditional English pantomime.
Who knew that Mary Worth was still running?
Just tonight, for example, while working on a new chapter of the Work-in-Progress, I found myself looking up Egyptian geography, 1970s newspaper comic strips, the plot of an old Jack London novel, scuba gear, smoking jackets, and the use of Mother Goose in traditional English pantomime.
Who knew that Mary Worth was still running?
And I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that's not an excuse to abandon it altogether. It's not even about science. Researching science for an SF story is no different from researching the geography or culture of the city where your story is set, or researching theater culture if you're writing a story about actors, or consulting with a chef if you want to write a story about a restaurant. There's this widespread idea that if you write something pertaining to science or science fiction, that's somehow an excuse to abandon the basic standards of competent research that would apply when writing about any other subject, and that just doesn't make sense. I don't buy the excuse that most readers won't know the difference, because most readers won't know the difference if you don't get a recipe right in the restaurant story or if you don't get trial procedure right in a courtroom drama. But some people in the audience will notice the difference, and they will complain, and I think it's unfair to them to think their reactions don't matter just because they're in the minority. No matter what the subject, it's worth doing your due diligence. Yes, of course the story is the starting point, but part of serving the needs of that story is to build a plausible setting for it to take place in.
(And just for the record, sometimes the science is the starting point. A number of my story ideas have come to me because I looked at a scientific or technological question and asked, "What are the consequences of this?" For instance, my first published story, "Aggravated Vehicular Genocide," was inspired by the idea of an interstellar ramjet starship and the powerful lasers it would need to vaporize or deflect asteroids in its path. One day it occurred to me to wonder, "What if an alien habitat crossed its path instead?" Thinking through the science gave me the story.)
True story: When I was writing a CSI novel a few years ago, I spent an hour on the phone to a real-life forensic sculptor, who, alas, politely informed me that one of my "brilliant" ideas was total nonsense and would never work in real life. I confess I was tempted to ignore her input and go ahead with what I had planned anyway, but, in the end, I dropped that bit from the book and found a more scientifically plausible way to arrive at the same conclusion.
For the record, there's apparently no such thing as a "reverse facial reconstruction."
For the record, there's apparently no such thing as a "reverse facial reconstruction."
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Don't think I said you don't need research.
Remember the scene in the most recent GODZILLA movie where the monsters attack the elevated tram at the Honolulu airport? Well, according to my research, there is no so such tram connecting the terminals at that airport.
Doesn't matter. It was a GODZILLA movie, not a documentary, and having Godzilla stomp on a couple of shuttle buses would not have been nearly so dramatic.
It's a balancing act. You want to get stuff right, but you also want to maintain a sense of perspective. I have yet to see a single review or post that nitpicked the layout of the airport in GODZILLA.
I didn't even know there was a real Mt. Weather.
Not saying I completely ignore reality - I do use it as a reference point for some things. There's just so much to take into consideration - you would need an army of pre-readers to cross every t.
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