SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
Recommendations and Lost Books
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good use of technology
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This Alien Shore! Epic hacker in far future space novel. Things go wrong with the tech, but it’s integral.
Good! More, anyone? Especially near future, I think, for Sutton's sake....
The nearer the future, the harder it is to invent believable technology.Whatever the technology is though, the less description of what it is / how it works the better, from a suspension of disbelief perspective.
Was it this group or another group where we had the debate about the feasibility of FTL drives?
Adrian wrote: "The nearer the future, the harder it is to invent believable technology.Whatever the technology is though, the less description of what it is / how it works the better, from a suspension of disbe..."
That's fair, but still. I'm sure someone has succeeded moderately well.
"The Less Dead, keeps (I mean, I’ll finish it) testing my willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe I could buy a library’s microfilm copy of a thirty-year-old newspaper, but I’m bugged by the narrator’s labored description of how a microfilm reader works and her subsequent discovery of a photograph in that newspaper that is reproduced in *full color.* It’s possible, sure, and I’m being really picky, but if you are going to rely on technology to move your plot along you need to use it right. And consistently (he said, moving on from The Less Dead to Holding Forth in General): don’t invent a cell tower outage or power-drained/forgotten phone just so your story won’t end two hundred pages sooner than you wanted it to. We see what you’re doing, and the whole point of novels is that we *shouldn’t.* In the meantime, can anyone recommend novels in which technology is grappled with more cunningly?"
I don't know if he's open to SF but I do think you folks are the most discerning, so if you come up with some rec's I'll send him a link to this thread as my 'random act of kindness' for the day. :)