Re: Getting out of this world?

Nuny@xxxxxxx <Alien8752@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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

Which is trying to press a view on an unrelated subject (the actual
writing), where you make assumptions that don't apply.

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.

1) I ask here because I need a theory.

2) Your statement contains more than one falsehood. So you can't
really say anything about my writing.

<snip>

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,

My knowledge ends around roughly the point of electrons wandering
from minus to plus, but it's assumed that stuff wanders from plus to
minus because that's what was 'decided' before they could know
better (practical and theoretical current direction).

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.

You don't need to know this to suggest theories. This isn't about
writing, this is about what existing knowledge can be used to have a
desired effect.

What matters is my requirement: real existing theory or possible
experiment.

The rest, the writing, is, plainly, none of your business. Going on
about it, with false assumptions, making statments that simply don't
apply, is irritating. And doesn't adress the actual question.

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,

Yes.

for another you don't seem to know much about science fiction.

Which is irrelevant for this.

Something about myself: I don't want to write stuff that you could
find on the shelves in bookstores because I started writing my own
stuff because I don't like what's on the shelves in bookstores.

I no longer buy books, because there's nothing there that I would
want to read. Naturally, I don't want to write stuff I don't want to
read. I don't need to know 'about science fiction', because that's
not what I want to write. So what any hypothetical folks would say
about the end product doesn't concern me, not readers, not editors,
not publishers.

What an individual I am familiar with says about the finished
product may interest me, in regard to the writing style, so I can
improve that. All else is how I like it.

<snip>

...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?

As long as it doesn't try to sell time travel as real (though a
character could be a scientists that mistakenly thinks it real), I'd
read on out of interest. But the destination is wrong, so if you
could tweak that... (I need a different reality, different
dimension, or other world in another universe. Which is all the same
really. Different timeline is still tied to the real world.)

Btw. (digressing somewhat), I don't think alternate timelines
branching off is possible because for something to go different,
something has to start different. The same parameters (all countless
ones) will lead to the same result every time. If you want, for
example, start a storm with a butterfly, you'll first have to insert
the butterfly, else no storm. And that is already different, so some
butterfly mommy will have to have left an extra egg, or one was not
eaten, and for that you need a cause, and so on... All the way back
to the beginning of time, where you will have to have different
conditions. (Basically, soemthing being different needs a cause.)

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.

I did say that it has to be a different dimension, reality, or other
world in another universe, and called it Fantasyland.

One with real magic. Not the ME (Magic Earth - see sig if you like),
but a really weird place where you can't even rely on things falling
to the ground. (My backbrain is quite good at making up internally
consistent worlds, only here I want to get some people from the
'real world' there, and don't know how.)

(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.

Take an existing theory, then assume not everything is known and
some odd side-effect happens. Then you've got possible. What _could_
happen, no matter how far fetched, if you do <insert weird theory>.

The guy in cellar isn't really believable for the power requirements
and financing. That's like building space shuttles in your cellar;
if it were that easy why is it so expensive?

I assume this will be something just as or more expensive (cheap
alternatives are welcome, if realistic), thus funded by government,
rich guy, cult, scientific experiment funding, whatever else you can
come up with. Not some teenager with pocket money. This isn't
MacGyver, I really want this side of the line to be believable. As
short and as briefly mentioned as the idea wants it to be, that bit
should really be 'right'.

After that I can do what I like and only tend to the bits my
backbrain yells about (it's good at picking out oddities, but that
is also the reason why _this_ side should be right; that has to be
consistent with 'real world').

<snip>

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.

I've told it all in the original post.

If I knew physics, I could come up with something myself. I don't
know physics, but people here allegedly do, so I came here to ask
about physics.

Btw, if I wanted advice on writing, I'd ask in rasf.composition.
Here, the suggestions (and off at that) are just anti-helpful.

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.

If you want to talk about writing stories, we can take that part of
the thread to rasf.composition.

I'd like to talk about explaining at a minimum, because the more I
know, the more I tell about in a story, and that wears on the style,
which I'd like to improve.

But here, in this newsgroup and in this thread, that subject really
has no place at all.

You could have Googled for Twistor and Cramer;

Internet requires a reboot and costs money. I only do that when I
really want to look at/find something. Usually that's not at all for
months.

there are reviews and even excerpts of the book online. It's a
hard SFnal treatment of the 'accidental trip to another world'
idea.

I don't want to steal someone else's 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 think my backbrain would bug me about that no end. I can't even
start without a theory to use. If I tried the story would be doomed
as countless other beginnings, though for a different reason.

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".

If I knew what to think about, I'd do it myself. I came here because
I don't know.

Thanks for nothing.

Don't give up so easily.

I don't. I started replying a lot less friendly, thinking it went
along the same line as before, but then edited (and will again),
when I saw that you were continuing friendly rather than rude.

I see elsethread you write about magical environments; which sort
of magic?

Depends on the setting. Two examples (I am beginning to feel like
spamming, but it's up only for a week, or less, so it's still new)
have excerpts online (see sig).

Magic Earth is an earth like ours (geographically), parallel to
ours, only it has magic. Some time in the past people developed
enough brains to use it, and with some talents added in, found a way
to prevent ageing, which means some of them are still around
(playing at evil overlord).

The actual magic system is simple: strength and complexity of what
you can do is determined by brainpower (short: skill). You can do
whatever you can think of how to do it, with details, or your
mindset is so funny that it works some other way (one culture
believes - and it works - that manipulating an image has an effect
on what is pictured).

The idea behind it is that magic is an extra <something> inside
atoms. On sub-atomic level things get weird, so I just decided (or
vaguely recall - I'm clueless about physics) that distances don't
matter on that level; magic provides a link from here to there,
whether from brain (where the magic-manipulating thoughts happen) to
object (that's manipulated from a distance), or from person (with
brain) handling say, a statue, through brain of person who believes
manipulating his image has an effect on him to actually having an
effect, or in moving someone/something from here to there instantly.

Magic itself works on a molecular/atomar level. Even simple folks
can alter sand into silver, provided they're trained properly.
(Side-effect; metals as currency doesn't work.) And the simplest
thing at all is probing an object for what is is made of/a drink for
what's in it.

Then there's the problem with solid, liquid, and gaseous matter.
Well, the only problem is liquid, because it moves (gas is spread
out too thin to matter, just as a glass with juice doesn't have any
felt effect), thus getting at the magic around rivers, for example,
is difficult to impossible (depending on skill again). Which of
course had an effect on history (what areas had early people using
magic and which are still too wet for many people to be even able to
touch magic).

And of course the magic someone has grows over time (negligible in a
normal lifetime, overblown after millenia), independent of static
raw brainpower, which I found is caused by magic slowly suffusing
people (in the cells of their body, which of course is just matter,
too).

That just as one example (that's enough rambling on about that).

Does it have rules that are comparable to a 'real-world' system of
magic that I might already be familiar with?

Not really. I don't like the 'traditional' approach. So no spells,
no ingredients, no silly guestures, useless wands or staves, no
rituals,... If anyone on the ME did use any of that or believed it
should work that way, it would be due to a funny mindset, or an
influence from our world beliefs due to the people that can watch
our world (that's one of the talents).

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?

My backbrain takes care of developing something consistent. Like,
for the ME I initially just wanted it a bad idea to settle near
water (because of an argument in rasf.written about what always has
to be the case - which I disagree on in principle), plus I wanted a
proper evil overlord (which means he's around longer than normal
people and not to be removed by the next passing tramp who has
nothing better to do), and an earth with magic, that of course
absolutely had to have a different history (insert magic into the
real world and thinking it's still the same is also something I
disagree with, unless you show that the magic _caused_ things to be
like they are now, and explain, believably, why it isn't widely
known).

The rest came while writing, and I'm always surprised at how well it
all fits. My backbrain even puts in clues for stuff I don't know
yet.

And I don't really write any way that involves 'what I want
something to do'. I write what I see, following the characters
around. I have some starting conditions (like wanting a proper evil
overlord, or now getting some people to Fantasyland), and a scene or
two that I see, and the rest comes while writing.

I don't doubt that someone could claim to find 'plot' in my stuff
somewhere. Personally I refuse the idea; I can't stand plot. It gets
in the way of stories by having events bent into not making sense to
meet 'plot ends'. Bah. (I think that's the same as what you mean by
"arbitrarily doing what someone wants it to do". To me, that's
'plot', or what plot does.)

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'

I need something that satisfies my backbrain. In this case that's
consistency with the real world on this side of the dividing line
between 'here' and 'Fantasyland'.

Hypothetical readers don't enter anywhere.

Now, tell us exactly where you need your characters to go,

Out of this universe and its siblings and into another dimension,
reality, or universe. Somewhere else entirely.

whether you need them to get back,

Don't know. Probably not.

and what limitations you want to impose on them (can they take
inanimate stuff, how much, that sort of thing).

I see them with their clothes still on, so I guess they take what
they wear. Naked is an option, though; I want to keep as much open
as I can.

I am wondering whether to get someone from there to here, too, kind
of swapping people, but am not sure I want that (would have to write
about that, after all). It's an option, though.

Also, jumping into a device isn't the only option. It could be an
experiment aimed at something else entirely that just has the
sideeffect of having random people apparently vanish, and end up in
Fantasyland.

Do that and you should get several good ideas.

Thanks.

--
Tina
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Excerpts at: <http://home.htp-tel.de/fkoerper/ath/athintro.htm>

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