Re: Getting out of this world?

On Oct 2, 3:12 am, Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
N...@xxxxxxx <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina Hall wrote:
So, what I'm looking for is a theory or three, in simple, that
might make this possible. (It's for an SF story, and only the
start; the excuse to get the people elsewhere, and perhaps some
from there to here.) Something that can be mentioned in passing
without elaborating too much.

<snip nonsense that hasn't anything to do with the question>

Agree.

What with? Not being interested in suggesting a current real theory
that <suggestions welcome for who tried it> built, to mention in
passing, to explain what got the characters there deliberately,
accidental, as a side effect, or...?

No. With Erik's advice not to waste your and your readers' time
writing about something that 1) you don't know anything about and 2)
you don't know in how much detail you have to explain to your readers.

Such a SFnal Standard Plot Device

What plot device, and what does that have to do with the question
about what theory could be used?

A means of getting somebody someplace interesting so you can tell
your readers a story about what happens there. In SF the relevant
device takes one of a fairly standard set of forms. If you'd read much
of it you'd know about a few of them. If you knew much science you
could probably think one or more up on your own.

Blocks of exposition explaining how it works don't usually do
that.

What blocks of exposition, and what does that have to do with the
question about what theory could be used?

"The extremely rickety oxcarts clunked and rattled making the
passengers fully expect them to fall apart before they got a mile down
the road, but the thousands of trained rats living in the carts
scurried from creaking timber to rotting rope, reassembling the carts
as fast as they fell apart."

That was basically an expository block that explained why the carts
didn't fall apart but unless there's a damn good reason your readers
need to know about the rats (like say the rats can be dragooned into
fixing a broken bridge down the road) there's no point in writing it-
just say everybody piled into the carts and went.

What's that got to do with a theory? Remember the broken bridge and
imagine that nobody in any of the carts knows how to fix it, but
there's these rats, see.... that's what happens in real science
fiction; the author has to come up with something plausible enough
that the readers will buy it and then has to explain it to them, and
it helps if it's based on science they already know about but not too
closely. You already know this though which is why you asked the
question you did.

The reason you're getting complicated, seemingly irrelevant answers
is because we don't know you, and we don't know what you do or do not
know, we don't know who you're going to try to explain your Plot
Device to or how good you are at that sort of thing. Well, that was
the case originally but now I think I know a few things about you and
what you know. For one thing you don't seem to know much about
science, for another you don't seem to know much about science
fiction.

Your likely audience

What audience

You know, whoever you intend will read (or hear or whatever) your
story. Or is it just for you?

...and what does that have to do with the question about
what theory could be used?

If I suggest that a certain hypothetical method of time travel will
have lateral uncertainty meaning the farther you travel into the past
or future, the likelier you are to end up in an alternate timeline,
will you need more background or will you just accept it and read on?

the concept if not the possible technical modalities

I don't see you mention a 'concept' at all; no theory at all for
making the trip possible.

That's because I hadn't gotten that far yet. See, you hadn't
specified the destination. How you get there can strongly depend on
where 'there' is.

(Something some guy built in his cellar
isn't currently possible, even if the theory behind it, whichever it
is, is/were real.)

You can _not_ have 'possible'. Get over that. You _can_ have
'plausible' which can indeed happen in some guy's cellar.

Besides, your editor

What editor, and what does that have to do with the question about
what theory could be used?

Self-publishing, then?

Why are you trying to lecture about things that have nothing to do
with you and the question I asked? That's just rude.

No, it's not. You asked a very complicated question and it'll take a
while to come up with what you really need, which you haven't told us
yet.

There's John G. Cramer's _Twistor_ which is exactly what you're
describing and which (at least the edition I have) contains a
"technical appendix" explaining the real and what he calls
"rubber" science behind his Plot Device, but then he's a working
physicist as well as a SF fan himself, so he knows how to blur
the line between real and rubber science so it's almost invisible
and at least somewhat interesting, or at least not eye-glazing.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

An example of somebody who really knows his stuff keeping the
explaining to a minimum to keep from interfering with the flow of the
story.

You could have Googled for Twistor and Cramer; there are reviews and
even excerpts of the book online. It's a hard SFnal treatment of the
'accidental trip to another world' idea.

An older example would be Edgar Rice Burrough's stories about John
Carter's adventures on Mars. Burroughs didn't offer any explanation at
all for how Carter got there, he simply had him fell asleep on Earth
and awaken on Mars.

I thought this was rasf.science, not
rasf.spout-anything-but-science.bull***.

From what you wrote I gathered that you thought it was "hand me an
excuse not to have to think".

Thanks for nothing.

Don't give up so easily. I see elsethread you write about magical
environments; which sort of magic? Does it have rules that are
comparable to a 'real-world' system of magic that I might already be
familiar with? If not, does it at least have internally self-
consistent rules so that what happens makes its own kind of sense as
opposed to arbitrarily doing what you want it to at a given point in
the story?

I ask that because a fairly well-known SF author, Larry Niven, also
wrote a straight-up fantasy series set in the past, using a system of
magic he created, that uses logical rules based on the existence and
properties of 'mana' which in his stories is the 'fuel' of magic.

Even Niven's fans who don't like run-of-the-mill magic stuff liked
his stories largely because it was easy to accept what happened in the
stories as logical outcomes of the setups; there was no jarring
arbitrariness.

That's what you need, something that will get your characters where
you need them to go without jarring your readers' 'willing suspension
of disbelief' (and if you aren't familiar with that term you need to
become so).

Now, tell us exactly where you need your characters to go, whether
you need them to get back, and what limitations you want to impose on
them (can they take inanimate stuff, how much, that sort of thing).

Do that and you should get several good ideas.


Mark L. Fergerson
.