The Laws of Science Fiction

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

If you want to write hard sci-fi, a 5 minute glace at this page should tell you all the DOs and DON'Ts about spaceships, with the rest of the site serving to elaborate if you care to learn more about a subject. There's also a good essay on respecting science in science fiction.

Vonda N. McIntyre's "Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy,
General Useful Information, & Other Opinionated Comments" is also neat. Read it here or here.

Personally, I always believed that the whole point of sci-fi was that it didn't conform to any hard and fast rules. Isn't the speculation and guessing of future technological developments part of the attraction?

Can't really say that I look forward to all future sci-fi being written from a standard set of rules!

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

If you want to write hard sci-fi, a 5 minute glace at this page should tell you all the DOs and DON'Ts about spaceships, with the rest of the site serving to elaborate if you care to learn more about a subject. There's also a good essay on respecting science in science fiction.

Why, thank you. That's my website.

[Jaime_Astorga]

Originally Posted by nyrath

Why, thank you. That's my website.

Your welcome.

You know, the number of people with famous websites on this forum never ceases to amaze me.

[Greg Anos]

RULE #1 about science fiction.

It's about people in new environments and the problems they have, not new environments that happen to have people in them! (I'm real broad-minded about what you consider people...The world awaits a yarn about a intelligent dolphin, from the dolphins point of view....)

No matter how interested you are in your created world, it's the people...

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

You know, the number of people with famous websites on this forum never ceases to amaze me.

Most famous websites require original content. This means most people with famous websites are authors. And this is a forum about books, abet ebooks.

Yes, Sir Edward, there are a limited number of story plots, and pretty much all of them are about people.

[DixieGal]

If you want your character to be called Triathelete, then call him Triathelete. Don't spell it Tr'th'leit and expect me to care. Nothing turns me off faster than trying to sound out something with too few vowels and too many apostrophes. It is very intrusive and I can never lose myself in the story.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

If you want your character to be called Triathelete, then call him Triathelete. Don't spell it Tr'th'leit and expect me to care. Nothing turns me off faster than trying to sound out something with too few vowels and too many apostrophes. It is very intrusive and I can never lose myself in the story.

Have you read David Weber's Safehold series? Now there some twists on personal names in the far future!

[Luke King]

Personally, I don't like hard sci-fi. For me, reading is about imagination. It's about entering another world. I don't really care if it's implausible, or unlikely. All that matters is that I can suspend disbelief. If I can do that, then I don't care about warp drives and ups and downs in space ships, their layout, the fuel they burn, and so on and so forth.

I don't even know why such details have to appear in a story. If they're not integral to the story (which is about the "people") then they should be left out.

A lot of science fiction written today seems to have forgotten the point. It's fiction.

The science fiction writers I admire: John Wyndam, Christopher Priest, Robert Silverberg (and others) can be shot down on a hundred points.

Who cares?

Agatha Christie wrote seventy-odd novels about murders that are entirely implausible. The people who read them don't care. It's all about the atmosphere, the tone, the style, the feeling.

I can read a very much more plausible Patricia Cornwell (which is akin to what is happening in science fiction) and it is about as interesting as a teaspoon.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Nothing turns me off faster than trying to sound out something with too few vowels and too many apostrophes. It is very intrusive and I can never lose myself in the story.

Rule: Avoid using names and words that are so strange-looking and hard to pronounce by your audience that it throws them off the pace of the story. If there are things in your story that have such names, use nicknames, ie, call the "Quantum Entanglement and Time Diffraction/Distortion Relativity Positioning Field Generator," or "QETDDRPFG," as "Warp Drive" or "Chevron Drive" or "Ludacris" or something.

Feel free to acknowledge the full name in at least (and usually no more than) one place in the story.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Rule: Don't feel obligated to explain a character or alien's entire life history and racial background when you first meet them. Your character's having a pet Targ at age nine probably has nothing to do with the story, and is just extraneous filler. Save it for when NBC knocks on your door and wants to turn your book into a TV series.

Work on character-establishing scenes: Scenes where some word or act, early on, does a good job of defining your basic character. Think of Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movie: We learned in two minor scenes that he thinks he's a tech jinx, and he improvises quickly on his feet.

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

If you want your character to be called Triathelete, then call him Triathelete. Don't spell it Tr'th'leit and expect me to care. Nothing turns me off faster than trying to sound out something with too few vowels and too many apostrophes. It is very intrusive and I can never lose myself in the story.

I have some characters like that with apostrophes in the name. But they're put there for a purpose to divide the name into two distinct elements. It kinda works the same as adding a dash, but it looks cooler.

Example Gayik'Von vs Gayik-Von. The first looks cooler and gets the same job done. And I certainly don't use it to hide vowels. For me it's a unique way to cut names in two. And there's actually only two book series I use it in, and for two races only. The Gayik'Von in my Earthfleet saga, and the Sattazins in the Land of the Lions series. And even in those two instances, the uses are limited to a couple of names.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

"Chevron Drive"

Fill her up, Scotty! And make sure you use premium!

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Rule: Don't feel obligated to explain a character or alien's entire life history and racial background when you first meet them. Your character's having a pet Targ at age nine probably has nothing to do with the story, and is just extraneous filler. Save it for when NBC knocks on your door and wants to turn your book into a TV series.

Work on character-establishing scenes: Scenes where some word or act, early on, does a good job of defining your basic character. Think of Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movie: We learned in two minor scenes that he thinks he's a tech jinx, and he improvises quickly on his feet.

Fully agreed! I see too many authors that do that, and I was even guilty of it at one time, until a mentor raked me over the coals about it and explained the right way to do it, which is along the lines of what you mentioned.

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Luke King

Personally, I don't like hard sci-fi. For me, reading is about imagination. It's about entering another world. I don't really care if it's implausible, or unlikely. All that matters is that I can suspend disbelief. If I can do that, then I don't care about warp drives and ups and downs in space ships, their layout, the fuel they burn, and so on and so forth.

I don't even know why such details have to appear in a story. If they're not integral to the story (which is about the "people") then they should be left out.

A lot of science fiction written today seems to have forgotten the point. It's fiction.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, if all such details are left out, it is no longer science fiction, it is just fiction. In the same way, if you leave out all extraneous historical details, it is no longer historical fiction, it is just fiction.

[neilmarr]

Laws of SF? My rule of thumb is simply this: Head in the stars, feet on the ground. Cheers. Neil

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

I have some characters like that with apostrophes in the name. But they're put there for a purpose to divide the name into two distinct elements. It kinda works the same as adding a dash, but it looks cooler.

Example Gayik'Von vs Gayik-Von.

Gayik'Von rolls reasonably well off the tongue, though in print it is kinda jarring. In such a case, I would shorten it to Gayik or Von, at least in text, to make it easier to read. (But that's me.) Though, since it's a race name, it won't come up as often as a character name, and so probably doesn't matter.

Keep in mind: Some characters will feel obligated to use full names; some will use shortened names; some will want to use nicknames. So you have choices.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

(I'm real broad-minded about what you consider people...The world awaits a yarn about a intelligent dolphin, from the dolphins point of view....)

If memory serves me correctly I believe at least part of "Startide Rising", by David Brin, is written from the point of view of the dolphin captain.