np NP Wednesday, Aug 15, 2018

[The Old Hack 2,448]

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That would definitely piss the romulans off.

Don't worry, they can escape through a CRACK IN THE EVENT HORIZON!

(Honest to God. They actually used that as an excuse to escape a black hole once. Ow.)

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That would definitely piss the romulans off.

Don't worry, they can escape through a CRACK IN THE EVENT HORIZON!

(Honest to God. They actually used that as an excuse to escape a black hole once. Ow.)

Quote

Brannon Braga lost no sleep worrying about the particulars of the technobabble used for the anomaly of this episode, as his top priority was dramatizing the plot itself. He explained, "Normally, the way we write stories is we come up with what we want to do dramatically [....] We add science later. And it works out much better that way. Though 'a quantum singularity' is a mouthful, I decided to use it anyway; but I literally could have called it 'a quantum fissure,' 'a quantum sinkhole,' anything. And who cares? Who really cares?" (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, p. 34)

... WE care. But I'm not surprised that Brannon Braga doesn't care about us.

[Scotty 1,061]

Just now, hkmaly said:

... WE care. But I'm not surprised that Brannon Braga doesn't care about us.

That Stargate clip posted earlier makes much more sense now, the writer was channeling Braga.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

A lot of young Sci-Fi fans are inspired by the fandom to study actual science.

Many science students and scientists continue to be Sci-Fi fans.

A fair amount of techno-babble and Pay-No-Attention-To-The-Man-Behind-The-Curtain is expected.
But when a significant portion of your audience has elementary scientific literacy, you need the impossible stuff to be college level mistakes.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

58 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

A lot of young Sci-Fi fans are inspired by the fandom to study actual science.

Many science students and scientists continue to be Sci-Fi fans.

A fair amount of techno-babble and Pay-No-Attention-To-The-Man-Behind-The-Curtain is expected.
But when a significant portion of your audience has elementary scientific literacy, you need the impossible stuff to be college level mistakes.

There is also the whole matter of showing some respect for your audience at least, as well as genre. Star Wars, for example, uses the trappings of science fiction but is something different. It blends science fiction with the Wild West, swashbuckling, classic kung fu and samurai movies as well as the Knights of the Round Table. The 'science' of Star Wars is eighty percent magic at least and all it needs to do is maintain some rudimentary consistency in order to remain believable. (That it does not always succeed is a different matter, but this is its foundation.)

Star Trek, on the other hand, at least has some pretense towards being actual science fiction. While it varies wildly, it at least attempts to pay some respect towards the laws of physics (which they cannae change until they do, a process somehow aided by good whisky.) The technobabble itself indicates this. If they weren't at least trying to pretend to science fiction, they would not bother with it. Star Wars has almost no technobabble at all though it does have a good helping of mysticism, which is not quite the same thing. Also, the believability of Star Wars is usually at its very weakest when they try to make their mysticism scientifically quantifiable. (Medichloreans. Yechhhh.)

Now, good technobabble will have at least some basis in actual science and mathematics. Enough so the problem itself is comprehensible and the solution shows at least some ingenuity. As an example, one story I read mixed the magic of a hyperdrive with the actual slingshotting effect of a gravity well. The magic hyperdrive was a given to make the entire setting possible to begin with. Using a gravity well to slingshot your vessel faster into a different direction is at least theoretically possible to the best of my knowledge. That worked.

Bad technobabble, on the other hand, will rely entirely on magic to provide the solution. Brannon Braga, unfortunately, cannot tell the difference. His early stories (with which he had the help of good editors and experienced staff writers) tended to be dodgy science-wise but excellent science fiction nonetheless because the science might be bollocks but the solution wasn't. The solution tended to take effort for the cast to accomplish and gave one a sense of actual danger. His later stories, Voyager and Enterprise being notable here, had equally bad science but the conflict tended to be resolved with magic. And unfortunately some of Braga's really good story ideas got killed for potentially costing too much or for taking too big chances for the producers to swallow. (Braga, of all people, wanted to introduce continuity to Voyager. To have damage to the ship stay between episodes and actual harm to crewmembers last. He wanted a whole season to show a Voyager progressively more damaged and beaten down with more and more losses until the climactic season finale. This proved to be more than the producers could handle because they were sure that TV audiences would be too stupid to understand such an advanced concept so it got condensed into a rather weak two parter with magic reset button at the end as per usual. Ah well.)

The too long, didn't read version:

Soft science fiction and space magic can work on its own.
Harder sci fi or sci fi with ambitions towards it needs to at least understand what Sir Isaac Newton, the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space, was talking about.
Soft sci fi that pretends to be the hard kind is usually an abomination.

[hkmaly 490]

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

A lot of young Sci-Fi fans are inspired by the fandom to study actual science.

Many science students and scientists continue to be Sci-Fi fans.

A fair amount of techno-babble and Pay-No-Attention-To-The-Man-Behind-The-Curtain is expected.
But when a significant portion of your audience has elementary scientific literacy, you need the impossible stuff to be college level mistakes.

There are enough ways to build sci-fi just from stuff which physicist say is technically possible. (Sure, limiting yourself to stuff which is actually possible may be too strict - but wormholes are totally legitimate solutions to the equations even if noone knows how to build one.)

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

There is also the whole matter of showing some respect for your audience at least, as well as genre. Star Wars, for example, uses the trappings of science fiction but is something different. It blends science fiction with the Wild West, swashbuckling, classic kung fu and samurai movies as well as the Knights of the Round Table. The 'science' of Star Wars is eighty percent magic at least and all it needs to do is maintain some rudimentary consistency in order to remain believable. (That it does not always succeed is a different matter, but this is its foundation.)

Don't forget fantasy. There is lot of fantasy in Star Wars. You only need to scrap the thin sci-fi paint.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

Star Trek, on the other hand, at least has some pretense towards being actual science fiction. While it varies wildly, it at least attempts to pay some respect towards the laws of physics (which they cannae change until they do, a process somehow aided by good whisky.) The technobabble itself indicates this. If they weren't at least trying to pretend to science fiction, they would not bother with it. Star Wars has almost no technobabble at all though it does have a good helping of mysticism, which is not quite the same thing. Also, the believability of Star Wars is usually at its very weakest when they try to make their mysticism scientifically quantifiable. (Medichloreans. Yechhhh.)

Or at least it used to be that way before reboot movies.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

Bad technobabble, on the other hand, will rely entirely on magic to provide the solution. Brannon Braga, unfortunately, cannot tell the difference. His early stories (with which he had the help of good editors and experienced staff writers) tended to be dodgy science-wise but excellent science fiction nonetheless because the science might be bollocks but the solution wasn't. The solution tended to take effort for the cast to accomplish and gave one a sense of actual danger.

I'm afraid to ask which earlier stories.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

Braga, of all people, wanted to introduce continuity to Voyager. To have damage to the ship stay between episodes and actual harm to crewmembers last. He wanted a whole season to show a Voyager progressively more damaged and beaten down with more and more losses until the climactic season finale. This proved to be more than the producers could handle because they were sure that TV audiences would be too stupid to understand such an advanced concept so it got condensed into a rather weak two parter with magic reset button at the end as per usual.

I'm not sure season with magic button at the end would be that much better ... but it's true the continuity would be interesting experiment.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

Harder sci fi or sci fi with ambitions towards it needs to at least understand what Sir Isaac Newton, the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space, was talking about.

Yes.

Although I seriously don't think Isaac Newton is the deadliest. Sure, he is deadly and he comes on often, but there are deadlier ones. Albert Einstein. Stephen William Hawking. Zefram Cochrane. Kevyn Andreyasn.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

23 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Although I seriously don't think Isaac Newton is the deadliest. Sure, he is deadly and he comes on often, but there are deadlier ones. Albert Einstein. Stephen William Hawking. Zefram Cochrane. Kevyn Andreyasn.

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. If we look at what science is potentially capable of today, I'd still say he does pretty darn well. Simply take a fair sized asteroid, accelerate it towards the Earth and enjoy the special effects. I doubt mankind has invented a nuke more destructive than what will happen.

26 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Don't forget fantasy. There is lot of fantasy in Star Wars. You only need to scrap the thin sci-fi paint.

Hence my use of the term 'magic.'

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I'm not sure season with magic button at the end would be that much better ... but it's true the continuity would be interesting experiment.

I agree. But as you say, at least it would be new.

[hkmaly 490]

36 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Although I seriously don't think Isaac Newton is the deadliest. Sure, he is deadly and he comes on often, but there are deadlier ones. Albert Einstein. Stephen William Hawking. Zefram Cochrane. Kevyn Andreyasn.

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. If we look at what science is potentially capable of today, I'd still say he does pretty darn well. Simply take a fair sized asteroid, accelerate it towards the Earth and enjoy the special effects. I doubt mankind has invented a nuke more destructive than what will happen.

Not yet. Also, it's hard to justify any stronger solution if your target is mere planet. If, however, you want to destroy whole solar system ...

39 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Don't forget fantasy. There is lot of fantasy in Star Wars. You only need to scrap the thin sci-fi paint.

Hence my use of the term 'magic.'

Yes, but it was suspiciously missing in previous sentence. And it's not JUST magic. The story of original trilogy itself is full of fantasy tropes.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, but it was suspiciously missing in previous sentence. And it's not JUST magic. The story of original trilogy itself is full of fantasy tropes.

We're in agreement about that. It's just that you think that my use of the word 'magic' is insufficient to invoke them, and for all I know you may be right. Let's just let it stand there.

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not yet. Also, it's hard to justify any stronger solution if your target is mere planet. If, however, you want to destroy whole solar system ...

Yeah, you kinda need something bigger for that. Or maybe smaller. A collapsar is not very big, size-wise.

Then again, I don't like to think what it would take to weaponise a collapsar. Me, I'd just stay away from the darn things.

[hkmaly 490]

27 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not yet. Also, it's hard to justify any stronger solution if your target is mere planet. If, however, you want to destroy whole solar system ...

Yeah, you kinda need something bigger for that. Or maybe smaller. A collapsar is not very big, size-wise.

Then again, I don't like to think what it would take to weaponise a collapsar. Me, I'd just stay away from the darn things.

Little advice about staying away from weaponized version of Kevyn Andreyasn's research: The Andromeda Galaxy is NOT far enough. Neither is our galaxy from Andromeda.