It's just a prop

[Graeme]

Do you have a prop in your story, something that is there because it assists the narrative?

Here's one of mine.

Quantum Communications: The ability to create traceless, indecipherable calls/texts/communications.

The reason for the prop is that my heroes are fighting an insurgency against a militarily more powerful, dominant, and corrupt authority in a world with pervasive surveillance.

Not being able to keep secrets made there job too hard. So I introduced this prop - everyone with quantum tech gets to keep secrets, and all the main players have this tech.

But there are limitations to the technology that can be exploited for strategic and tactical effect by all sides.

What's your favourite prop?

[Nik]

I guess sci - fi is the most fertile soil for auxiliary but not yet existent stuff and gadgets..
Non interceptable communication is something, I believe many try to develop and maybe some succeed-:)

[Graeme]

The point of the prop was to level the playfield.

If the opponents are too one-sided in their capabilites it eliminates the opportunity to do an action novel based on frequent combat and replaces it with an action novel with lots of running and hiding.

I wanted to write the first - not the second...

[J.J.]

That's what I'm doing my current WIP. :D

Heading for the climax now and the MC is running back and forth between the plywood shacks trying to keep out of sight of the patrols.

[Graeme]

(Smiling...) Sounds interesting.

Have you got a working title?

[J.J.]

Are There Heroes In Hell?

A future tale of an American POW surviving in a camp in the Arctic.

[Quantum]

Graeme wrote: "Do you have a prop in your story, something that is there because it assists the narrative?

Here's one of mine.

Quantum Communications: The ability to create traceless, indecipherable calls/texts..."

oh, so it uses quantum entanglement?

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/scientist...

[Graeme]

Hi Alex, possibly... :-)

[Quantum]

Graeme wrote: "Hi Alex, possibly... :-)"

ah, good, no spoilers. spoken like a true author. i'll keep reading, then.

[Marie Silk]

J.J. wrote: "Are There Heroes In Hell?

A future tale of an American POW surviving in a camp in the Arctic."

Sounds like a great story

[Ian]

My biggest prop is, being SF, an inertial field that locks all atoms within a ship to the ship's frame of reference, with the ability to add additional accelerations, which has the effect of providing artificial gravity and permitting very high accelerations without squashing those on board. The prop permits the removal of long times of modest acceleration while getting up to relativistic velocities, and thus takes away the need to know what the crew were doing, and also removes the need to worry about decalcifying bones, in other words, it progresses the story by permitting me to leave out filler bits.

[Kevin]

My prop is an Apple Watch that lets you travel to the past, in one day increments only. It allows my character to explore and learn from his past.

[Graeme]

Alex G wrote: "Graeme wrote: "Hi Alex, possibly... :-)"

ah, good, no spoilers. spoken like a true author. i'll keep reading, then."


LOL. More like asking Gene Roddenberry to explain (in detail) the operation of a Star Trek Teleporter.

[Graeme]

Hi Ian, and Kevin,

Now that's what I'm talking about.

[[deleted user]]

My most used prop in my 7-book series on time travel is the 'Time Distorter', a device that allows a person or object to travel in time or creates a 'time bubble' that makes that person move at a rate one thousand times faster than other persons around, basically making the device carrier an invisible variant of The Flash. In my novels, the field agents of the Time Patrol have such a time distorter implanted directly inside their bodies (against internal face of the spine) and is commanded via mental orders from the brain. That made the agents time machines by themselves, giving them huge advantages against their opponents.

[J.J.]

Trying to think of an actual prop is kind of hard, because I have a tendency to strip away technology or enter into a spiral of ever-increasing damage to ships, etc. In my Freedom Reigns series, I think the airlocks became a sort of prop to keep things going. One of the many Sci-Fi staples I threw into that series was the out-of-phase thing, but I established there was no air in the out-of-phase dimension...it's a pure vacuum just like regular space. To use it, they have to create rooms and transfer oxygen over, or cross in space suits.

In book 5 the MC and his little band are forced to cross an area of space with an increased concentration of radiation that the hull can't hold back. So they set up an entire complex "out-of-phase" to hide in while they move through that space, but the problem I had storywise, was the ship was too big to completely recreate it, so only a fraction of the ship contains the out-of-phase complex, but most of the book requires the characters to move about the entire ship, so I had to create the airlocks to allow them to move in and out without losing all the air. And it almost became annoying that I had to keep mentioning them instead just establishing them and ignoring them going forward.