I was reminded of this problem this week, as I have a short story due for an interstellar exploration anthology.
Now, you guys know though I’ve written for Analog, I’m very far from being a scientist. I mean, sure, I took all the fast track science and stuff, until 9th grade when, due a concatenation of personal, political and historical circumstances I landed my rebellious little (back then!) behind in the so called liberal arts.
As we all know, a lack of mathematics atrophies certain areas of the brain, an atrophy possibly encouraged by regular doses of Cliff’s Notes. (Look, I read Shakespeare and Jane Austen and can even take Goethe in small doses, but really, no. That modern Portuguese novel they made us read, where the whole point was nothing happened? Wagner’s librettos? The sheer suckiness of most of what calls itself magic realism? [I said most. Hint, friends of Castro can’t do magic realism for the Marx. Seriously.] All of this was digestible only in Cliff’s notes form. Because otherwise I’d have punched holes in my parents’ walls. And my parents’ walls are made of two-foot-thick stones, so you see the problem. (Though I’ll note the instance of big literature test where I’d happily managed to forget the book even existed and had failed to provide myself with cliff’s notes or the Portuguese equivalent. When I realized the test was happening, and I couldn’t contrive some emergency to post postpone it or close the school for the day [you TRULY don’t want to know] I read the prologue. From the prologue I guessed the rest of the book. My answer – essay – ran to ten pages, focused on the prologue and how it foreshadowed the entire book. I had an A. And that, children, is when I decided to be a fiction writer. Also, when I learned to despise that type of author with the withering disdain of those who do for those who pretend.)
What this comes down to is that when my two, intensely science track sons ask me a question, it only goes to further their opinion I’m mentally retarded. Or weird.
Oh, I read all sorts of popular science books, because I’m INTERESTED. And I can, given time and a pad of paper come up with reasonable extrapolations.
BUT – and this is a big but (yes, the one with two tt too. Office chair sprawl) – it’s been years since I did science fiction SHORT STORIES. Novels, yeah, but not a short story.
Somehow working on this story catapulted me back to my original view of what it took to write science fiction short stories – their being you know, smaller and therefore more concentrated than novels. (SF short stories, now with twice the science!)
And here’s what I believed when I started out:
1- Science fiction short stories have to hinge on a science puzzle or effect.
2- Since all of the easy puzzles or effects have been written, it takes years of research to write one science fiction short story.
3- You must spend at least three afternoons in calculations (which at this point requires me to spend a week learning the math again) to verify your premiss.
Despite the fact that this directly contravened the instructions the two editors gave me, by Friday night and more than halfway through the story, I’d worked myself into a “can’t breathe” panic, convinced what I was writing was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Thank heavens one of the editors was more patient than he should be, even if he now probably thinks I’m insane. (I’m not revealing names till I sell the story!)
And now that my head has been reset on science fiction short stories, (again) perhaps I can send a story to Dr. Schmidt and stop hiding from him at conventions. (Besides, I think he’s onto the false nose and the moustache.)
Oh, yeah, and (#4 – You MUST use a slide rule. EVEN if you have three scientific calculators in the house. You MUST check your calculations with a slide rule.) I suppose I should get back to second-son’s room and return to him his “toy” slide rule that I absconded with. Right?
According To Hoyt 
Sheesh I haven’t used a slide rule since high school and I can’t think of a reason use one today.
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My Dad has an old slide rule in a cabinet at thier house. I knew I should’ve swiped it last time I was over there. No wonder I have so much trouble with Science Fiction! Oh well, back to Fantasy Land!
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Slide rules. Sigh. In college I lost a beaut, thinking my parents would buy me one of those new electronic calculators…no, they bought me the biggest, most complex slide rule imaginable. I probably still have it, having been shamed into not losing valuable equipment.
And Sarah, most science fiction is about the people. The cool science is either to get them where they’re going, get them into trouble, or provide the means of getting out of trouble. Nothing especially new or unique _required_.
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I know, I just had a moment of total, psychotic insecurity.
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You do realize that there’s probably a story in there, about someone grabbing their son’s slide rule to check the results from the latest wing-ding scientific calculater… and finding that they don’t check? What do you do then?
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The Sci-Fi short stories that have stuck with me through the years had characters that were largely incidental to the story. (“Nightfall” “The Sentinel”, etc.) The Golden Age of Sci-Fi was pretty famous for this (whether that’s a feature or a bug is subjective).
Now, most modern Sci-Fi is certainly about people.
But does the output of the last couple decades comprise a majority of all Sci-Fi?
I’m skeptical.
OK, your basic point is sound, and I’m being a prig. But the whole “Year Zero” thing annoys me.
(Of course, I’m admittedly prone to go haring off after questions like “What are the metaphysical implications if String Theory is wrong?” It’s a good focus for a story, but it’s also one that relegates the characters to secondary importance. I’d hate to see that type of Sci-Fi story disappear.)
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Yes, of course. Though my favorite is Cold Equations where the people DO count. And that’s more the type of story I’m aiming for. Though in my case I’m looking at the … society influencing implications of the type of tech chosen. (There are a lot. And though they’re not the point of the story, without them there would be no story for these particular characters.) Not what I think you refer to as “the last two decades” (it’s actually I think the last four) where the character is coping with… widowood or self doubt, but it’s sf because she does it in the FUTURE! I truly can’t write those anymore than I can write slice of life.
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The use or abuse of technology is as a theme in SF is still going strong. Take LMBujold’s Falling Free, for instance.
But you don’t have to be a physicist to use FTL in your books, nor a mircobiologist to explore the effects of genetic engineering. Because the effects are all happening to people. Even when the people aren’t human.
Now I know explaining the totally imaginary nuts and bolts and tech specs of weapons and warships appeals to some readers. See David Weber’s following. But they are imaginary, and not a users manual. And they need the stories of the people using them to make them into a story, not just an exploration of possible future weaponry.
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I *am* a physicist (in recovery) and I have to consciously dial the science back when I write fiction. You can’t put the level of detail “real” science requires for Cool Stuff, you’d be writing a multivolume encyclopedia. Mostly SF writing needs to be at the level most people understand their cars; if you don’t feed it gas it don’t work. If you don’t give it fresh oil on a regular basis, Bad Things happen. Tires should not have holes in them. Basically, boundary conditions and failure cases ;-) Which, of course, is where the fun stories happen. Space Cadet Jones neglects to decromlify the ogulator, and all hell breaks loose.
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Hmm. I don’t think I made my point clearly.
Lots of SF short stories revolve around an idea, rather than characters.
Treknobabble is an independent variable. If anything, I’m inclined to believe it lends itself more to character-driven stories than idea-driven stories.
Take the example I threw out earlier.
It doesn’t take a huge amount of obscure knowledge to know astrophysicists believe Dark Matter and Dark Energy comprise the vast majority of the “stuff” that makes up the universe, or that String Theory is basically a rationalization which allows us to pretend that these things follow the physical Laws we know and love (despite evidence to the contrary).
So, if you posit the basis of the story as “What if String Theory is false?” Then this has wide-ranging implications about the nature of the Universe and our place therein, but technical complexity isn’t really a factor.
(If I ever get around to writing this story, you’d better believe it’s going to use the first few lines of “The Call of Cthuhlu” as the intro.)
[grin] “A couple” is a deliberately imprecise term (I’m pretty sure this is not a regional colloquialism, as I’ve heard it many different places in the country, but I could have gotten an unrepresentative sample). Generally, it means something along the lines of “more than 1, less than 4”. Combining an imprecise number with a large unit of measure gives you a large fudge factor/window to hit. [shrug] I was pegging the shift at about 30 years ago for major market penetration, 20 for an absolute majority, but didn’t feel like doing the research to substantiate that. Hence the generalization. ;) Close may only count with horseshoes and handgrenades, but if I get to define my own target…
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