Technology overtaking ficitonal SciFi technology: (update the fiction?)

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 7. Jul 17, 20:31

Morkonan wrote:The science or tech it uses in its stories does not have to be "realistic" in its specifics, but is meant to present the reader with a "what if" scientific discovery or technological advancement and then explore how mankind might deal with it.

But that only works if the world it describes is to some degree both believable and engaging. Without believability (note that this is not necessarily equivalent to realism) you are performing a "what if" that very few people will be interested in reading about or watching. Failure to be engaging has the same result, and generally people are engaged by things they can relate to. If you present as "future tech" something that looks silly and old fashioned, because what you thought would be future tech 50 years ago has long since been surpassed but in a different direction, then people struggle to relate to it.

birdtable · Post by **birdtable** » Fri, 7. Jul 17, 21:26

@ Morkonan ... I think you will find that the spice did not allow the warping of space but gave the Space Navigating Guild the ability to carry out accelerated/complex calculations (instead of computers) to enable the Hollzman Engine to effect travel safely, avoiding any gravitational anomalies etc etc, and I am not to sure about the worm poo theory either ....

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Fri, 7. Jul 17, 21:52

CBJ wrote:But that only works if the world it describes is to some degree both believable and engaging. Without believability (note that this is not necessarily equivalent to realism) you are performing a "what if" that very few people will be interested in reading about or watching. Failure to be engaging has the same result, and generally people are engaged by things they can relate to. If you present as "future tech" something that looks silly and old fashioned, because what you thought would be future tech 50 years ago has long since been surpassed but in a different direction, then people struggle to relate to it.

(Skip to the TLDR if you wish)

Steampunk...

I hate Steampunk. All you have to do is add leather and brass to something and it's Steampunk. Oh, and steam, with some sort of handwavy excuse for why electricity doesn't work. (I don't hate anything that has a good story in it, though.

) It's certainly not realistic, not believable in the least, doesn't even try to justify much of its tech or science, but people line up at the shelves for it and it's one of the most rapidly growing genres of... whatever it is.

Anime/Manga/Tentacleporn...

I don't really have much good to say about these things. But, I don't read 'em, can't get into them, and I think they're silly, shallow, and exploitative. But, people line up, etc..

Fantasy/Horror..

I have never once had a ghost fetch me a glass of water from the kitchen. It's not that far, not a heavy job, and I'd certainly be pleased. But nothing... nada. C'Thulu won't even return my calls. And, just to let you guys know, dragons are communists. It's true! Do not engage them in dialectics, though. They have a unique way of making a strong argument. But, people lay awake at night afraid of them and kids glue tinfoil to cardboard and spend their days rescuing damsels from them.

None of the technology, science, magic, evil forces or any of that makes any significant difference at all in a "good story."

In the end, it's about a believable character who makes choices in a setting where the character's actions, beliefs, values and relationships with others are consistent and rational given the circumstances they're faced with. No amount of creative magic in developing a setting, political intrigue, social struggle, etc, is going to create "a good story." It's all about the characters.

"Alice in Wonderland"

There is nothing at all rational about the setting. The characters that Alice meets are nigh-on incomprehensible. There is no attempt to explain anything at all about how they got there, why they do what they do or even what they are. But, it's one the most beloved stories in the history of "literature" and certainly in the annals of "fantasy." We are Alice, surrounded by uncertainty and in a place where we have no idea of what might happen next. And, because of that believable Alice, it becomes a great story. (The summary- Young girl encounters weird stuff, is changed.

)

Suspension of disbelief - That's the key, isn't it? A reader is fully willing to suspend their disbelief, just as long as the writer doesn't continually try to pound a nail into their head by... doing what? Being inconsistent, of course. As long as the characters are believable and their motivations are understandable, no matter how fanciful they are, then there's no threat to that suspension of disbelief, right? Maybe...

(TLDR)

BUT, and this finally deals directly with what your addressing- Suspension of disbelief can be broken when something appears that isn't rational or isn't consistent internally, given what is written. And, unfortunately, while the success of the story relies heavily on the character, this breaking of the reader's attention can be caused by anything in the story. Anything at all! How greatly it effects the story depends on just how inconsistent or unbelievable it is in the opinion of the reader, no matter how fanciful or science-fictiony its origins are.

When we see something in a science fiction story that has a real-world analogue, whether due to the passage of time and real tech advancement or not, we have certain expectations on what is consistent and believable about it that may not have been realized by the writer. Many older television shows and movies often end up getting that part "wrong" if we compare these bits to the modern world. But, that doesn't mean that the stories, themselves, are made less because of that. It only takes the further willingness of the reader to overlook these newly created faults in order for them to be laid aside.

The Lensmen series, Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars... Wells, Verne, Heinlein, Burroughs, Bradbury... These are all still great stories and authors, despite the newly discovered faults in their prognostications about science and technology. Why?

What makes people "relate" to a story even if it's full of gobbity-gook tech that has long been understood and surpassed? It all boils down to believable characters, no matter how fanciful they are, in an internally consistent setting, no matter how that world compares with reality.

The only true TLDR that is applicable, here

The only thing the writer has to do is to keep the reader reading. Nothing else matters.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Fri, 7. Jul 17, 22:29

Antilogic wrote: Balance to be struck between the reality and what is acceptable, understandable and just plain interesting for their target audience.

So have the bad guy view the sun changing through a screen on his launch site, and put warp nacelles on the missile. Both are in-universe appropriate and would make the scene work pretty much the same.

Mightysword · Post by **Mightysword** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 04:13

brucewarren wrote:Sometimes tech gets in the way, especially when the writers get the tech wrong.

The most grating example I can think of offhand is in a Voyager episode where there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what a computer program is.

They send a copy of the Doc off to cure the real Zimmerman back on Earth. So far so good, but Voyager is left without one in the meantime.

Why? He's a program. He's data. There's no reason given why two copies of the same program can't run at the same time. Maybe if it consumed too many resources there would be some excuse but if he was going to be running on two separate computers each fully capable of running the program then the issue of system resources doesn't apply.

If you had wached the anime series Zegapain it comes up with reason to explain that. Note that I'm not an expert so I have no idea how feasible it is, just mention the fact that they do come up with one, better than nothing I guess.

The premise is that a decease wiped out the human population, so in its dying hours human transfer their consciousness into several super computer hub which simulate the daily life. So think something like Matrix, but unlike Matrix where there is actually a living person driving the program, everyone exist purely as data. So in-order to accurately simulate everyone's life (to the believable decree like the Doc), each person have only one single copy stored in Quantum bits, each time the data have to be projected or transferred it's always the whole original in whole, no backup, or copy. Each time it happens the data degrade a bit until a point it becomes too corrupt and the data "dies".

brucewarren · Post by **brucewarren** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 17:50

For me that idea doesn't work at all.

The whole idea of transferring consciousness is a very silly one. I know it's popular in some circles but it suffers from the same logical flaw that matter transporters do.

You're not transferring anything. What you're doing is creating a clone, and killing the original. For a computer program that's not a problem. For a real person it matters a great deal.

I can't speak for everyone but for me the idea that while I'm languishing in the fiery pits of Hell, or facing the prospect of non existence a copy of me is living what ought to be my life is of little comfort.

It also doesn't work because in Star Trek lore, holograms are not instances of people. They are computer programs. The real Zimmerman is very much still alive. If holograms were people then every time someone said "End program" he'd be committing murder.

birdtable · Post by **birdtable** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 18:50

"End program" could also mean .... sleep until required.
I see little difference from a computer to a brain,,, storage is neurons (human) and transmitted through the switching between the neurons ... just like reading a hard drive and allowing the cpu to produce the desired results .... only difference is the level complexity....
If you can transfer the required data in a computer you should be able to do the same with humans given the required research ....
Unless you believe that consciousness is stored nowhere to be called upon when required by magic then in time transfer would be possible .....
We are all just biological computers of very little significance that have evolved over thousands of years... nothing more.

brucewarren · Post by **brucewarren** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 19:12

The problem here is the word transfer. It makes it sound as if computer data is physically moved from a to b like bricks in a wheelbarrow. That almost never happens with computer data.You make a copy and then delete the original.

Even if you could make a computer with all the facilities of the brain and copy every last memory across with 100% accuracy you've still only made a copy of the person. You haven't transferred anything. You've made a copy.

So now you have two people. The one is an exact copy of the other. He may believe himself to be the other, but the original might have something to say on the matter. Do you then kill the original? He might have something to say about that too.

I recommend a video by CGP Grey called The trouble with transporters.

Sometimes an author will throw the magic word quantum into the mix as a form of handwavium. I for one no almost nothing about quantum mechanics and it's a reasonable assumption that most members of the public equally ignorant on the matter too.

Mightysword · Post by **Mightysword** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 19:18

brucewarren wrote: You're not transferring anything. What you're doing is creating a clone, and killing the original. For a computer program that's not a problem. For a real person it matters a great deal.

I can't speak for everyone but for me the idea that while I'm languishing in the fiery pits of Hell, or facing the prospect of non existence a copy of me is living what ought to be my life is of little comfort.

It kinda work in the setting of the anime though, granted I used the word transferring consciousness at my liberty so it may not have been a good choice of words. The idea of the anime wasn't to preserve the life of individual, but to maintain the existence of humanity.

So Yuki and his friends are about to die to the decease, their whole being are converted into data, then he died, that's it for the "real" Yuki, no one care about him anymore (because in the anime literally every single last human died, human essentially instinct). The super computer than using such data to emulate a word for the virtual Yuki and his friend to live in. Since the data is so accurate, the virtual Yuki will live exactly the way the real Yuki would. And not just him, but he will live along side his friends, his family, and the people of his city inside the virtual world. The idea is that one day when the condition allowed, an automatic facility based on the moon will start cloning these cluster of virtual population into physical being and imprint all of the data to that clone. A new Yuki will be born into the world with all the memory and experience of the old and virtual Yuki, thus maintain the continuation of humanity.

And as we know, human is actually a super computer and our memory bank far exceed any computer storage device, thus it's impossible for the computer to store/transfer a secondary of such a person.

brucewarren · Post by **brucewarren** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 19:34

Fair enough. I have to admit to an ignorance of anime too.

Pity we can't have multiple instances of the Doc though. Imagine how much more work he could do if there were dozens of him on the go. If there was a disaster and dozens of critically injured crew he could treat all of them at the same time.

Come on Starfleet we want multiple EMHs on our ships. Tell those lazy engineers back at HQ to get on it.

Post by **Santi** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 20:40

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is an entertaining novel that in part deals with human personalities being stored in implanted at birth cortical stacks, and the use of "sleeves", human bodies grown in a tank with no sensorial input till a stack is implanted in them.

I think a Sci-Fi series, spawning several books over many years should stick to the lore created in the first books. As Brucewarren pointed out with the Foundation series, the trilogy made afterwards simply does not click with the spirit of the original books nor with the setting of a decaying Empire.

Post by **UniTrader** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 21:07

i think the Gundam Metaverse has a nice Solution for this Problem:
Keep the central Elements/Topics* but put them into a new Setting for each new Iteration/Universe.
(basically you could say each iteration is a new Franchise, though really its not)

i cannt give any recommendations here because most Gundam Series are running for a Year total and have roughly 50 Episodes, so certainly no quick watch.

* recurring elements of Gundam:
=> War is Hell
=> a Mysterious Masked Man
=> Haro
=> really surprising/shocking Plot twists

EDIT: and because it was just mentoined in a Video i watched: Final Fantasy does this too and is probably better known to most here. ok, its not really Sci-Fi but as far as i know each FF Game has its own Universe (sequels/prequels of course excluded) and not much connection between those..

birdtable · Post by **birdtable** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 21:57

Robert Heinlein's book ... I Will Fear No Evil .... would cause some debate with personality transference ....

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 22:30

brucewarren wrote:Sometimes an author will throw the magic word quantum into the mix as a form of handwavium. I for one no almost nothing about quantum mechanics and it's a reasonable assumption that most members of the public equally ignorant on the matter too.

This is actually fairly reasonable as far as handwavium goes - quantum information doesn't follow the same rules as the classical kind, and in particular you can't just copy quantum information - but one thing you can do is "teleport" a quantum state around. That is to say, if you have some system A at one location, and an identical system B at another, it's possible to rig up a system which allows you to teleport the state of A to B. This has been demonstrated for real with systems up to the complexity of a few particles (single atoms, that sort of thing).

If we assume that the complete, exact quantum state of a person is linked to their continuity of consciousness, which seems relatively reasonable, then in principle you can construct an exact replica of that person, teleport their quantum state over to the new one, and now we've teleported a person without murdering them in the process. (The practical issue here, of course, is that the ~10^28 atoms in a person amounts to a rather more complicated system than is probably practical to do this to.) But this doesn't necessarily get you out of the broader ethical issues, as now you have to deal with a) what happens to the body that's left behind (it'll have its quantum state thoroughly buggered, but it'll still be intact and theoretically able to wake up as a new person) and b) what happens to whatever consciousness was present in the destination body before you trampled it with the transferred one. So you've avoided murdering the person you're actually trying to transfer at the cost of creating two new people and promptly murdering one of them. Teleportation: Still an ethical minefield.

(Of course, there's also the question of whether continuity of consciousness is really a thing, or just a convenient fiction our brains tell us so we don't start refusing to go to sleep...)

Mightysword · Post by **Mightysword** » Sat, 8. Jul 17, 23:37

Hey, this make me feel wanting to watch Zegapain again

The nice thing is, as I was watching the show, the same question came up in the anime. When the new kid saw the (data) partner of a veteran dying due to combat damage, he poses the question that I guess pretty much every audience must be wondering: "we're a bunch of data right, so don't we have a backup somewhere to restore your partner?" and what I said in the previous 2 post basically the explanation the veteran gave the kid.

So instead of skirting the detail like Star Trek, you can say the writer of this show was being due diligent.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Sun, 9. Jul 17, 05:50

In Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" series, there's a concept that revolves around people's personalities being uploaded/stored. One of the major societies revolves around beliefs that deal with uploaded/stored consciousness.

In that setting, most don't believe that these stored consciousnesses are actually the real people they represent. Not even the consciousnesses themselves are quite sure if they are... they.

Some maintain they are truly what they represent as the almost immortal consciousnesses of the humans that were stored and some do not. It's a very strange belief system unique to that culture, though, and it's certainly a value-added part of the story. So, in that case, it's all good, no matter if it's slightly squirrelly or not.

BUT, more significantly than whether or not such a thing is possible is the drama that gets created by the newly introduced stakes involved with these... people. And, of course, the way Hamilton fiddles with this new fiddly-bit introduced in his story makes for very entertaining reading.

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Technology overtaking ficitonal SciFi technology: (update the fiction?)

Re: Technology overtaking ficitonal SciFi technology: (update the fiction?)

Re: Technology overtaking ficitonal SciFi technology: (update the fiction?)