The Laws of Science Fiction

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Falcao

I hate when SF books are situated in, say 30th century, and make references to 20th/21th century facts, like if somebody would remember us in 30th century. How about making references to some invented 27th century cultural trends?

Today we make references to people and events that took place 2000 years ago as a matter of course. Middle ages... Renaissance... regularly referenced. So I can buy 20th century references in a 30th century story... as long as they are reasonably significant, or likely to be historically lasting (IOW, no references to obscure metal bands or catch phrases from "Chico and the Man").

I do like to see authors create their own cultural references... Jack McDevitt, I think, does this very well.

[Steven Lake]

I actually am a bit stickler about consistency in books. It drives me nuts when stuff isn't consistent, and there's no explainable reason why. Now if there were something like, "In situation A and B, this is true, but in C the rules change and this is true" and the reasons are logical, I'll accept the change. But in most cases there is no acceptable reason. That's why I sit down and crunch the math on everything I do when it comes to FTL travel, or write rulesets for each given object to know what the rules are and the exceptions.

Case in point. When I originally wrote Destiny's Mission, I officially, for the first time in the series, specified the top speeds of given space craft and the total flight times to a couple of key locations. Well, I went back later on and was playing with the numbers again (something just didn't sit right with me), and found out that I had actually miscalculated the math. So I went back, gutted, and rewrote several key sections in the story in order to fit with the corrected numbers rather than just let it be and "fix it later" in another book. ^_^

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

"sucktivity"?

Can I add that to my lexicon?



Rule: Consistency is KEY to accepting fictional science. If technology reacts to different situations in a counter-intuitive way, or in similar situations in different ways (or, as demonstrated by the old "Flash Gordon" serials, a laser that can melt a rock, yet create only a building agony when projected onto Flash Gordon's chest until it can be switched off at the other end of the cliffhanger--gad, I laughed at that scene!), the audience won't believe the science, and you've lost them.

Subrule: Quantum Mechanics is still mysterious enough to sometimes supply a "fudge-factor" and explain inconsistencies. But don't get too sloppy using it.

One of the things I've noticed is that when there are unbreakable rules set in place there is a tendency to try and work around them or change them. I'll use an example involving time travel.

In DC Comics at one point time travel was so easy that it was only slightly more difficult than jumping in the family car and travelling to the next city. Some characters (like Superman, Green Lantern [Hal Jordan], and Jonah Hex) spent a signifcant amount of time in other eras. But if you travel to a time where you already exist the time-travelling you becomes a phantom, able to observe events but unable to change anything.

So, after an event that altered the structure of the universe, a rule was set down that each person can only use each of the three known methods of time travel one time in their life. After the third trip you were stuck where ever you ended up for the rest of your life. But it is possible for you to meet yourself.

Soon, that became too restrictive so it was altered so that you can make repeated trips but the price is that you will begin to take physical damage to your body (one character had significant parts of his body replaced with cybernetics due to this damage). This was later altered to making repeated time travel possible but extremely risky.

Now repeated time travel is possible but the danger is that you can alter the past. The longer that alteration remains in place, the more firmly in place it becomes until it becomes unchangable. Due to this, a group of individuals have taken on the task to ensure that history is kept on track, countering any alterations in the timeline.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Of course, no one expects comic books to be consistent... they never have been, whether it's about science, its own characters and their abilities, history, mortality or causality. As much as we might bash Star Trek for its soft SF, comic books make Trek look like A Brief History of Time...

[Steven Lake]

Well, scifi writers have used a wide variety of different ideas and concepts of time travel over the years. But ultimately all time travel formulas are based around two core theories of time from regular science. The first is linear time. IE, time flows in a single, straight line, and every action has a corresponding effect that changes the future ever so slightly in a different direction. This is where a lot of paradox stories come from. It is believed that the moment you arrive in a given point in the past, you're already changing history, thus creating what is called by some the "Grandfather Paradox". IE, any interaction with the past changes it, thus creating a situation where you never went to the past and thus didn't change history. Kind of a did, and yet really didn't kind of thing. The only known exception I can think of for this paradox is the "Insertion Paradox", which is a situation where you arrive in the past, but don't actually change anything. Instead you become a functioning part of history, rather than a driving force of change.

The other is parallel time. This theory states that a new branch in the timeline is created for each and every decision a person could make. So for example, if you walked into an icecream shop and there were five flavors of ice cream, you might ultimately have anywhere from five possible choices, to as many as thirty, depending on if you want to mix and match the flavors, get extra toppings, etc. Thus the timeline fractures, allowing each of those potential decisions to happen, resulting in the formation of multiple branches in the timeline.

The problem with this theory is that, according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it's impossible, as you'd need an infinite amount of energy in order for it to occur, as each individual branch of the timeline would have its own unique and massive energy requirements equal to all the others. So each time the timeline branched, the power requirements to support and sustain such a change would be a factor of the number of divisions in the timeline. So if there were seven possible decisions, the power requirements would increase seven times what they had been before. That would require so much energy that the galactic reserves of energy (whatever insane amount those might be) the universe needs to function would be quickly depleted and everything would come to a grinding halt. And if all of the energy of the universe is contained within the timeline, it wouldn't be long before the timeline split so much that it ran out of energy.

That's where "Collapse Theory" comes into play. Applying the 2nd rule of thermodynamics, the theory states that no all branches of a given timeline survive. Some branches are stronger than others, and as they progress farther down the timeline, the stronger ones feed off the weaker ones, thus causing them to collapse and cease to exist. Their energy is then folded into the parent trunk and used to feed the branches further down the timeline.

Yeah, I know that's a bit of a nerdy description, but it's actually such a fun pair of theories that I've been working with them for some time trying out all kinds of different ideas. Interestingly too, is the fact that a lot of writers mix and match various elements from the two theories together as needed and where they prove most convenient. The problem is, the theories are mutually exclusive. IE, They can't both exist. You either have linear time, or parallel time. You can't have both. Now there is a way around this however, as parallel time can be observed as linear time to the time traveler simply because they're immersed in the flow of time, and thus all events appear linear to them.

Thus if you change the past, the future appears to change accordingly with the alterations you made. However, no change has actually occurred. You have simply traveled down a different branch of the timeline from what the current version of you knows. It's being high up in a tree, climbing down one branch to the trunk, and then climbing up another. To you it appears as though you're still on the same branch, but in reality you're on a different one. This also opens up a rather interesting plot element that can be tons of fun to play with. Since time is branching, finding alternate timelines involves simply stepping from one timeline and into another.

Stargate SGI and Atlantis did this exact thing in several of their episodes. SG1 followed the idea of going back in time and traveling up a different branch of the past, whereas Atlantis merely remained in the present and hopped between various branches of time. So each of these ideas have been explored in the past, and will likely continue to be explored in the future as well. So they're pretty much free for anyone to use if done right. Now, one other thing that can be used as a plot element, and this has been used as well, is the enormous energy requirements necessary to break out of one branch of the timeline and head to another, or to travel up and down the branches. By moving through time, you're essentially jumping between temporal snapshots which would require considerable energy by the time traveler to overcome in order to travel through time.

The Back to the Future trilogy tinkered with this idea a little, what with needing plutonium in order to provide the incredible amounts of energy required to make the jump through time. Anywho, that's my blurb on time travel.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

That's why I've never delved in time-travel: Too many points of impracticality to overcome, as well as the fact that the lack of evidence of time-travel in our past indicates no one's ever figured out how to do it!

Seriously, if I was going to subscribe to any theory, it would be the linear time theory, coupled with the fact that a time traveler would automatically become part of the timestream when he arrived, not a time-disrupter...ie, whatever they may do has already been determined by history, they cannot change it.

But then there's Star Trek...

Bottom line (and to be considered a rule): Time travel is just as impossible as FTL drives. If you can ignore the science enough to have one... go ahead and do the other... what's the difference?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Of course, no one expects comic books to be consistent... they never have been, whether it's about science, its own characters and their abilities, history, mortality or causality. As much as we might bash Star Trek for its soft SF, comic books make Trek look like A Brief History of Time...

It's only been recently that comic books have started to pay attention to continuity, with all sorts of retconning going on to try to impose order on chaos.

But in everyone's defense, maintaining continuity over a series of any length is a neat trick. I know various folks who have written tie-in novels for Star Trek, who have stories about Paramount. Like having a novel bounced by Paramount after being accepted and purchased by the book line, because "The Federation wouldn't do that!", and the people responsible thinking for about 5 minutes and rattling off half a dozen produced scripts from The Original Series where the Federation did exactly that...

Simply keeping track of all the little bits that make up continuity is a Herculean task, and it's way too easy to drop balls.
______
Dennis

[Fat Abe]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

That's why I've never delved in time-travel: Too many points of impracticality to overcome, as well as the fact that the lack of evidence of time-travel in our past indicates no one's ever figured out how to do it!
[/B]

The subject is too complicated for the average writer, and certainly for the general reader. Dr. Michio Kaku wrote two blogs on the subject:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/19070

http://bigthink.com/ideas/19312

I'd go for the physical grounds argument as a "cop-out" against time travel being possible. However, the transversable wormhole theory of Kip Thorne is intriguing. Too bad my math skills are too rusty to delve into the equations behind this theory.

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Subrule: Quantum Mechanics is still mysterious enough to sometimes supply a "fudge-factor" and explain inconsistencies. But don't get too sloppy using it.

The technical term for this is "Technobabble."
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/roc...tml#handwavium
As opposed to "Handwavium" and "Unobtanium"

[nyrath]

As a general rule physicists are very hostile to the concept of time travel. The trouble is that traveling backwards in time can be used to violate causality, which more or less demolishes the very foundation of physics.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/roc...html#causality

Their choices are either that time travel is impossible, or that some as-yet undiscovered law of physics magically prevents violations of causality. Using Occam's Razor, they take the simpler choice of making time travel impossible.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nyrath

The technical term for this is "Technobabble."
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/roc...tml#handwavium
As opposed to "Handwavium" and "Unobtanium"

I knew there was a proper name for it...

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It's only been recently that comic books have started to pay attention to continuity, with all sorts of retconning going on to try to impose order on chaos.

But in everyone's defense, maintaining continuity over a series of any length is a neat trick. I know various folks who have written tie-in novels for Star Trek, who have stories about Paramount. Like having a novel bounced by Paramount after being accepted and purchased by the book line, because "The Federation wouldn't do that!", and the people responsible thinking for about 5 minutes and rattling off half a dozen produced scripts from The Original Series where the Federation did exactly that...

Simply keeping track of all the little bits that make up continuity is a Herculean task, and it's way too easy to drop balls.
______
Dennis

It's true about the use of retcons in comic books as an attempt to bring order to the chaos. DC Comics alone has done three universe-altering events (Crisis On Infinite Earths, Zero Hour - Crisis In Time, and Infinite Crisis) specifically to clean up all of the continuity problems that have accumulated over its 70-year history. This doesn't include the retcons done within the individual titles.

[WillAdams]

The sad thing about DC is that instead of consolidating their universes they instead should have continued serially creating new ones --- this has worked quite well for Marvel w/ their Ultimates and Marvel Adventures story lines.

William

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

The sad thing about DC is that instead of consolidating their universes they instead should have continued serially creating new ones --- this has worked quite well for Marvel w/ their Ultimates and Marvel Adventures story lines.

Personally, I thought one area where DC did it right was creating a "cartoon continuity" for some of their characters, and adopting the look used in the animated series like Superman and Batman, to create a separate but parallel universe and continuity to the more traditional comic universe. I think Marvel could have tried the same.

Although I like the Ultimates reboots, seeing them run alongside the traditional characters doesn't work well for me. To me, there should be one continuity, not 2-3-14 running in parallel (with the exception of projects like DC's "Elseworlds," which are usually one-shots). The multiple-continuity thing just seems to me to be one more way the comics industry tries to flood the market with product, resulting in diluting the impact of all of it at once.

[WillAdams]

Agreed w/ DC's cartoon continuity being very well done --- the Justice League Unlimited stories are excellent and I've been meaning to get my kids a copy of the graphic novel (we read a library copy) of their own. Marvel instead of re-telling stories which are already available in a different format acknowledges the video and movie universes as specific universes of their own in Marvel's multi-verse.

The nice thing about multiple universes is one can ignore those which one is not interested in (I don't touch the Marvel Zombie books for instance).

William