Fictional Science in Science Fiction
The Science of Science Fiction: Star Trek vs Mass Effect
Besides plot, character development, dialogue, and everything else that goes into story writing, another major consideration when writing science fiction is world-building. That’s an extremely broad topic, but world-building in science fiction inevitably centres on another particular consideration: the science. Whilst I was writing my first novel Voidstalker and then the sequel Krakenscourge, the most interesting part of the creative process was coming up with the science that brought this fictional universe to life. It was also one of the most complicated parts – at least for me.
Not all science fiction includes fictional technology, and if it does it may not be a central or even a particularly important feature of the story. A post-apocalyptic setting almost by definition will feature a world that has regressed technologically, so there’s no need to obsess about the physics of flying cars. For this post, I’m going to assume that the stories in question are set in universes which do have advanced technology, by which I mean technology based on science that exceeds the cutting edge of real-life science.
How Much Does The Science Matter?
Why it matters is (hopefully) self-explanatory. The extent to which it matters, however, depends on how prominently otherworldly technology features in your story. In Altered Carbon, for example, the entire background universe revolves around a technology that allows people to transfer their consciousnesses from one body to another and effectively become quasi-immortal. Such a technology would result in a society that is radically different to ours, and a big part of the Altered Carbon universe is the enormous social upheaval that this technology has caused. Failing to nail down the specifics of the technology (how it works, who gets to use it, etc.) would have undermined the whole premise.
I’m not suggesting that sci-fi writers should allow the fictional science to take precedence over actually writing the story, let alone that you should bore the reader with pages of fictional technical explanations. On the contrary, just as the reader doesn’t need a description of every blade of grass as the protagonist is walking through a beautiful field, so you don’t need to provide an explanation for the workings of every gadget featured in the story. Nonetheless, the more prominently a piece of technology features in your story, the more important it is that you have the details nailed down, and you should also be prepared to include those details when needed to enrich the story.
As far as I can tell, there are two basic approaches that one can take towards fictional science in science fiction, and I’ve named each after two sci-fi franchises that best exemplify each approach. Although both franchises have a lot of written fiction based in their respective universes, neither is actually a book series. You can quibble with the relevance of TV or video games to written science fiction, but the importance of these two examples is the very different ways in which they treat fictional technology, not the exact medium.
The Star Trek Approach
The first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series aired on 8th September 1966. Half a century later, it has become the most successful science fiction franchise in history, and terms like “phaser”, “warp core”, and “tricorder” have entered the sci-fi lexicon. These are just made-up terms and have no basis in real science, but of course, that’s the point. I don’t know what Gene Rodenberry’s exact process was, but the Star Trek approach to fictional technology amounts to making up a lexicon of strange, fictional technical terms whose very strangeness makes clear how exotic, advanced, or otherworldly the technology is. Any questions about how a piece of tech works or what the name means can be deflected by the truism that we don’t know what kinds of innovations will appear in the future.
This is a perfectly legitimate approach to take to science in science fiction, “legitimate” because it’s a tried and true method utilised by one of the most successful sci-fi franchises in history. For the most part, if at all, no explanations are given for how the technology works; all that’s needed is a name for the technology and a clear understanding of what it does. Phasers are weapons, a warp core provides power to the starship so that it can travel faster than light, and a tricorder is a handheld scanning device. What they do is clear from the contexts in which they are used, and the otherworldly naming conventions bring the fictional side of the science to life.
However, there are two significant problems with the “Star Trek approach”. The first arises from the process of coming up with fictional technical terms in the first place. Even the most imaginative person will struggle to come up with truly original terms for fictional technology, let alone an entire lexicon of such terms – a problem that also arises when making up names for characters, species, concepts, planets, and civilisations. Furthermore, even if you can manage this, an abundance of made up technical terms that are clearly made-up could come across as gobbledygook, thus causing your efforts to backfire.
The second problem arises from solving the first. Because of how difficult it is to invent totally original-sounding terms, those inventing the fictional terminology inevitably have to raid the English language for material and end up using words which most readers (or viewers) know are scientific terms but of whose meaning they only have a hazy understanding. It’s safe to conclude that the Star Trek writers did not have scientific backgrounds (neither do I, by the way) because if they did, the examples described below would probably never have occurred.
In the pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, Voyager uses “tricobalt devices” (no, not photon torpedoes) to destroy the Caretaker’s Array. Obviously, these are meant to be a special kind of weapon but…tricobalt? Like three pieces of cobalt? Cobalt does have plenty of real-world uses, but if you know what the constituent phonemes actually mean, the resulting word sounds silly. Another example is at the end of the Voyager episode One Small Step (I’m picking on Voyager because that’s the Star Trek series I’m most familiar with) in which Captain Janeway notes that the away team: "collected over sixty teraquads of data on the anomaly." "Tera" means a trillion and most people know that "quad" means four, so even though this is obviously a fictional unit of data, the term itself is nonsensical.
The point of these two examples is not (solely) to nit-pick. The point is that if you take the Star Trek approach, you still need to be careful about the terms you choose. If you’re pilfering from the existing scientific lexicon, then there is a chance that you’ll misuse the terms in ways that don’t correspond to their actual meaning, which in turn will detract from the fictional universe you’re creating on the page. You could still choose to run this risk and bank on the average reader not knowing enough about science to tell; but first of all, this assumption is a little bit patronising, and secondly the more misused terms you employ (and the more readers you have) the more likely these inconsistencies are to be caught.
The Mass Effect Approach
Mass Effect is a 3rd person shooter RPG set in the late 22nd century. Although there is now a successful series of novels set within the Mass Effect universe, it is a video game franchise first and foremost. As I said earlier on in this post, the point of using these examples is to examine the different ways in which they treat fictional technology, so the fact that the two franchises are not books is not important. The first Mass Effect game was released in 2007, so obviously it lacks the pedigree or the global fame of Star Trek, but its approach to fictional technology is radically different.
“Element zero” is a fictional (obviously) element within the Mass Effect universe which, when subjected to an electric current, creates a field which alters the mass of any matter within the field. A positive current increases the mass of matter within the field whereas a negative current decreases the mass. This phenomenon is known as – you guessed it – the “mass effect.”
Fictional though the mass effect field is, if it were real, the list of real-world applications it could revolutionise is virtually endless. In fact, it forms the basis for most of the technology seen in the game series, from faster-than-light travel to weapons. A “mass accelerator”, for example, is the standard weapon technology on which nearly all of the games’ guns are based, and it is made possible by the invented scientific phenomenon of mass effect fields – it’s better known in real life as a railgun.
This is what makes the Mass Effect universe so rich: the developers put a huge amount of thought into developing the background story of the universe they were creating, and the result is a vast array of technologies which – fictional though they are – are grounded in actual science. The intuitive connection the developers draw between their made-up science and real world science brings the world-building to life by making you think that this really could come true in the future.
It’s not just the technological bases that get covered, either. There’s an entire in-game encyclopaedia called the codex which provides a wealth of background information for the delectation of the reader (or gamer, in this case). It covers everything from in-game technology to the history, culture, and biology of the various alien species you encounter, to the administrative and logistical practicalities that govern galactic society.
I freely admit to being biased in favour of the Mass Effect approach because I found it to be far more intellectually and creatively fulfilling when I was writing my own novels, but I’m not suggesting that other authors should always choose it over the Star Trek approach. On the contrary, the biggest challenge of the Mass Effect approach lies precisely in the nature of the approach: the author will have to do much more thinking about the background to the world they want to create to make sure that the fictional science they describe is internally consistent. This is all well and good for a video game studio with dozens of staff and a multi-million dollar budget, but it’s a much taller order for a self-published author.
Which Approach Is Better?
It depends. For one thing, the Star Trek approach and the Mass Effect approach are not mutually exclusive. In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise-E follows a Borg sphere back in time when it emits chronometric particles to create a temporal vortex. Chronos is the Greek god of time, after whom anything time-related (chronology, chronometer, etc.) is named. As for Mass Effect, you can probably guess what medi-gel and kinetic barriers are, but what about “biotics”? The term as used in-game means something quite different in real life. Just as I recommend using technical terms that correspond closely to their actual meaning, so it will sometimes be necessary to break this rule rather than worry that every term you come up with might be misused.
For another thing, coming up with detailed and coherent background information about fictional technology should only worry you to the extent that it features in your story. Are your characters space soldiers with personal shielding built into their armour? Do the shields block energy weapons or solid projectiles or both? Why do they protect against one and not the other? Why would they be able to protect the wearer against both? How is the wearer supposed to hold their gun without it being knocked out of their hands? How is the wearer supposed to do anything with their hands (like open a door or press a button on a control panel) without their shields reacting in inconvenient ways?
I had to think extensively about those questions for my two books, as did the developers of Mass Effect because in both cases the technology in question featured prominently enough that any inconsistencies would be glaringly obvious. By contrast, the “deflectors” in Star Trek are somehow able to block both energy-based phasers and torpedoes as well as physical debris with ease. Besides underscoring the difference between the two approaches, this also goes to show that you don’t have to overthink the problem. The Star Trek approach enables you to avoid getting into the weeds about how your fictional technology works, whereas in the Mass Effect approach, getting into the weeds is the whole point.
In short, it depends which approach you prefer. Just be sure to keep your technical terminology consistent and reasonably self-explanatory.
Besides plot, character development, dialogue, and everything else that goes into story writing, another major consideration when writing science fiction is world-building. That’s an extremely broad topic, but world-building in science fiction inevitably centres on another particular consideration: the science. Whilst I was writing my first novel Voidstalker and then the sequel Krakenscourge, the most interesting part of the creative process was coming up with the science that brought this fictional universe to life. It was also one of the most complicated parts – at least for me.
Not all science fiction includes fictional technology, and if it does it may not be a central or even a particularly important feature of the story. A post-apocalyptic setting almost by definition will feature a world that has regressed technologically, so there’s no need to obsess about the physics of flying cars. For this post, I’m going to assume that the stories in question are set in universes which do have advanced technology, by which I mean technology based on science that exceeds the cutting edge of real-life science.
How Much Does The Science Matter?
Why it matters is (hopefully) self-explanatory. The extent to which it matters, however, depends on how prominently otherworldly technology features in your story. In Altered Carbon, for example, the entire background universe revolves around a technology that allows people to transfer their consciousnesses from one body to another and effectively become quasi-immortal. Such a technology would result in a society that is radically different to ours, and a big part of the Altered Carbon universe is the enormous social upheaval that this technology has caused. Failing to nail down the specifics of the technology (how it works, who gets to use it, etc.) would have undermined the whole premise.
I’m not suggesting that sci-fi writers should allow the fictional science to take precedence over actually writing the story, let alone that you should bore the reader with pages of fictional technical explanations. On the contrary, just as the reader doesn’t need a description of every blade of grass as the protagonist is walking through a beautiful field, so you don’t need to provide an explanation for the workings of every gadget featured in the story. Nonetheless, the more prominently a piece of technology features in your story, the more important it is that you have the details nailed down, and you should also be prepared to include those details when needed to enrich the story.
As far as I can tell, there are two basic approaches that one can take towards fictional science in science fiction, and I’ve named each after two sci-fi franchises that best exemplify each approach. Although both franchises have a lot of written fiction based in their respective universes, neither is actually a book series. You can quibble with the relevance of TV or video games to written science fiction, but the importance of these two examples is the very different ways in which they treat fictional technology, not the exact medium.
The Star Trek Approach
The first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series aired on 8th September 1966. Half a century later, it has become the most successful science fiction franchise in history, and terms like “phaser”, “warp core”, and “tricorder” have entered the sci-fi lexicon. These are just made-up terms and have no basis in real science, but of course, that’s the point. I don’t know what Gene Rodenberry’s exact process was, but the Star Trek approach to fictional technology amounts to making up a lexicon of strange, fictional technical terms whose very strangeness makes clear how exotic, advanced, or otherworldly the technology is. Any questions about how a piece of tech works or what the name means can be deflected by the truism that we don’t know what kinds of innovations will appear in the future.
This is a perfectly legitimate approach to take to science in science fiction, “legitimate” because it’s a tried and true method utilised by one of the most successful sci-fi franchises in history. For the most part, if at all, no explanations are given for how the technology works; all that’s needed is a name for the technology and a clear understanding of what it does. Phasers are weapons, a warp core provides power to the starship so that it can travel faster than light, and a tricorder is a handheld scanning device. What they do is clear from the contexts in which they are used, and the otherworldly naming conventions bring the fictional side of the science to life.
However, there are two significant problems with the “Star Trek approach”. The first arises from the process of coming up with fictional technical terms in the first place. Even the most imaginative person will struggle to come up with truly original terms for fictional technology, let alone an entire lexicon of such terms – a problem that also arises when making up names for characters, species, concepts, planets, and civilisations. Furthermore, even if you can manage this, an abundance of made up technical terms that are clearly made-up could come across as gobbledygook, thus causing your efforts to backfire.
The second problem arises from solving the first. Because of how difficult it is to invent totally original-sounding terms, those inventing the fictional terminology inevitably have to raid the English language for material and end up using words which most readers (or viewers) know are scientific terms but of whose meaning they only have a hazy understanding. It’s safe to conclude that the Star Trek writers did not have scientific backgrounds (neither do I, by the way) because if they did, the examples described below would probably never have occurred.
In the pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, Voyager uses “tricobalt devices” (no, not photon torpedoes) to destroy the Caretaker’s Array. Obviously, these are meant to be a special kind of weapon but…tricobalt? Like three pieces of cobalt? Cobalt does have plenty of real-world uses, but if you know what the constituent phonemes actually mean, the resulting word sounds silly. Another example is at the end of the Voyager episode One Small Step (I’m picking on Voyager because that’s the Star Trek series I’m most familiar with) in which Captain Janeway notes that the away team: "collected over sixty teraquads of data on the anomaly." "Tera" means a trillion and most people know that "quad" means four, so even though this is obviously a fictional unit of data, the term itself is nonsensical.
The point of these two examples is not (solely) to nit-pick. The point is that if you take the Star Trek approach, you still need to be careful about the terms you choose. If you’re pilfering from the existing scientific lexicon, then there is a chance that you’ll misuse the terms in ways that don’t correspond to their actual meaning, which in turn will detract from the fictional universe you’re creating on the page. You could still choose to run this risk and bank on the average reader not knowing enough about science to tell; but first of all, this assumption is a little bit patronising, and secondly the more misused terms you employ (and the more readers you have) the more likely these inconsistencies are to be caught.
The Mass Effect Approach
Mass Effect is a 3rd person shooter RPG set in the late 22nd century. Although there is now a successful series of novels set within the Mass Effect universe, it is a video game franchise first and foremost. As I said earlier on in this post, the point of using these examples is to examine the different ways in which they treat fictional technology, so the fact that the two franchises are not books is not important. The first Mass Effect game was released in 2007, so obviously it lacks the pedigree or the global fame of Star Trek, but its approach to fictional technology is radically different.
“Element zero” is a fictional (obviously) element within the Mass Effect universe which, when subjected to an electric current, creates a field which alters the mass of any matter within the field. A positive current increases the mass of matter within the field whereas a negative current decreases the mass. This phenomenon is known as – you guessed it – the “mass effect.”
Fictional though the mass effect field is, if it were real, the list of real-world applications it could revolutionise is virtually endless. In fact, it forms the basis for most of the technology seen in the game series, from faster-than-light travel to weapons. A “mass accelerator”, for example, is the standard weapon technology on which nearly all of the games’ guns are based, and it is made possible by the invented scientific phenomenon of mass effect fields – it’s better known in real life as a railgun.
This is what makes the Mass Effect universe so rich: the developers put a huge amount of thought into developing the background story of the universe they were creating, and the result is a vast array of technologies which – fictional though they are – are grounded in actual science. The intuitive connection the developers draw between their made-up science and real world science brings the world-building to life by making you think that this really could come true in the future.
It’s not just the technological bases that get covered, either. There’s an entire in-game encyclopaedia called the codex which provides a wealth of background information for the delectation of the reader (or gamer, in this case). It covers everything from in-game technology to the history, culture, and biology of the various alien species you encounter, to the administrative and logistical practicalities that govern galactic society.
I freely admit to being biased in favour of the Mass Effect approach because I found it to be far more intellectually and creatively fulfilling when I was writing my own novels, but I’m not suggesting that other authors should always choose it over the Star Trek approach. On the contrary, the biggest challenge of the Mass Effect approach lies precisely in the nature of the approach: the author will have to do much more thinking about the background to the world they want to create to make sure that the fictional science they describe is internally consistent. This is all well and good for a video game studio with dozens of staff and a multi-million dollar budget, but it’s a much taller order for a self-published author.
Which Approach Is Better?
It depends. For one thing, the Star Trek approach and the Mass Effect approach are not mutually exclusive. In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise-E follows a Borg sphere back in time when it emits chronometric particles to create a temporal vortex. Chronos is the Greek god of time, after whom anything time-related (chronology, chronometer, etc.) is named. As for Mass Effect, you can probably guess what medi-gel and kinetic barriers are, but what about “biotics”? The term as used in-game means something quite different in real life. Just as I recommend using technical terms that correspond closely to their actual meaning, so it will sometimes be necessary to break this rule rather than worry that every term you come up with might be misused.
For another thing, coming up with detailed and coherent background information about fictional technology should only worry you to the extent that it features in your story. Are your characters space soldiers with personal shielding built into their armour? Do the shields block energy weapons or solid projectiles or both? Why do they protect against one and not the other? Why would they be able to protect the wearer against both? How is the wearer supposed to hold their gun without it being knocked out of their hands? How is the wearer supposed to do anything with their hands (like open a door or press a button on a control panel) without their shields reacting in inconvenient ways?
I had to think extensively about those questions for my two books, as did the developers of Mass Effect because in both cases the technology in question featured prominently enough that any inconsistencies would be glaringly obvious. By contrast, the “deflectors” in Star Trek are somehow able to block both energy-based phasers and torpedoes as well as physical debris with ease. Besides underscoring the difference between the two approaches, this also goes to show that you don’t have to overthink the problem. The Star Trek approach enables you to avoid getting into the weeds about how your fictional technology works, whereas in the Mass Effect approach, getting into the weeds is the whole point.
In short, it depends which approach you prefer. Just be sure to keep your technical terminology consistent and reasonably self-explanatory.
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