The main reason, I think, is that science fiction is science. It's a common conception that to write good sci-fi, you have to know a lot about science. You don't want to make a fool out of yourself by making inaccurate statements, abusing the laws of physics, misunderstanding mathematical concepts that are required in space travel.

There's a lot more that you 'have' to know: distances in space, astronomical concepts and vocabulary (Astronomical Unit, the Steady State Theory, Blue Shift, Red Shift, speed of light) *gasp*! There's so much! I haven't even scratched the surface.

The fact is science fiction is more intimidating because it requires fact. But here's the thing: if you don't want to write about actual fact, then you don't have to. People are just as fascinated with out-there stories about aliens and planet exploration, and those don't need much fact!

Keep this in mind: humanity has never traveled farther than our own moon (shh, don't freak out. I mean, we've never personally traveled -- excluding probes). Seems kinda pathetic huh? We pretend to know so much about the universe, basing everything we know on what we see from where we are. That seems kinda like trying to say what's on the other side of the city without stepping beyond your mailbox. You can say anything when you write. Because the human race knows absolutely nothing about the big picture.

Look at Stargate SG-1 the television show (I know, it's not literature) It's intriguing, and purely fiction. There's a book called The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn -- it's fantastic, and it has very little scientific fact.

So if you want to write sci-fi, write it. You don't need to have a master's to understand that an AU is 93 million miles and the speed of light is 200... no... 180 thousand... no that's not right... really fast.
-Jayson

I think the way I stay unintimidated is I write what I know/like/want to write. I don't want to write about astrophysics. I'm (with deepest apologies to the astrophysicists on the board...) not very interested in those details. My thinking is, when the time comes (if?!) for interstellar travel, there will be all kinds of Very Smart People who will figure that stuff out. I won't be one of them. I'll be doing something else.

So I write mostly near-term, 50ish years ahead kinds of things. I wrote a post-apocalypse bit for the Apocalyptic Taco Mix story challenge (a little depressing, but a great exercise.) I just finished my Nano project about a teenage girl making friends and solving problems on a space station. I know the space station has some sort of gravity generator - see, they have low gravity days and high gravity days, and chambers that can be turned zero gee whenever needed. That and some computer stuff (I have a technology background so I can make up an appropriate level of detail for that stuff) is all the "science" in my novel. Mostly it's just about a girl, how she relates to others, how weird and different her new environment is to her, how she handles the challenges of a mean teacher, mean girls at school, a crush on a boy, etc. Normal stuff.

I guess what I like about the sci-fi genre is I can take problems/situations from today, and just project them off into a slightly different environment (on the moon, a near-future earth where population has grown tremendously, a space station, another planet - though I haven't done the non-earth stuff yet myself.) The new environments give me an opportunity to evaluate these things from a fresh perspective.

To me, that's a lot less scary than inventing a culture, a people, a history, a weapons and magical system, the rules, things like chivalry, pecking order, topography, weather, agriculture, industry (like, where do they get their clothing?), languages, and all the other stuff it feels like would be necessary for fantasy. I know I'm being over-dramatic about what it takes, but to me that seems almost insurmountable. My few forays into fantasy have been in the non-high fantasy genre (like a story about everyone's favorite imaginary person, Mr. Nobody.)

A lot of the people who appear to write science fiction are actually doing what OSC does ("write fantasy with science as the magic").

If you're worried about the "buzzwords," get someone who does know what they mean to look at what you've written and tell you if it works or not. A scientist as a "wise reader" for a science fiction story is a good idea anyway. Or talk to one and check your ideas with him or her before you write the story.

Another approach to try: instead of writing about the science itself, write about how the characters are affected by the science. Just as we don't explain to ourselves how our cellphones work every time we use one, you don't need to explain how your futuristic gadgets do what they do. Just show how their doing whatever affects the people who use them.

In the example of cellphones, I am continually amazed at how easy they make it to arrange to meet with someone else when we are both going our separate directions and running our own errands. I'm always asking myself how we survived without cellphones (yet we did, and most of us did it less than a decade ago).

Kathleen said, "instead of writing about the science itself, write about how the characters are affected by the science" and I'm convinced this is one of the keys. The story is the people and how they react to their brave new world; not the science itself, which is a back-story and a unique trigger for their behaviour.

I re-read Blish's "Cities in Flight" a while ago and was a little disappointed, because although the City Fathers were credible and I was willing to suspend disbelief in them, the story was spoiled by engineers carrying around "slip sticks" - slide rules, the things we used before calculators were invented. Of course Blish had no way of predicting they'd happen but it did make the story less credible for a modern reader, and I was reminded that some accuracy in science matters.

Anther example is more comforting -- Heinlein's "the door dilated." The science is implied and the people are the story (and of course I cannot remember which story it was). I have a feeling that since the characters accept the science so, too, will the reader.

To get scientific accuracy when it matters to me, in an area I'm not familiar with, I use Google. With several websites popularizing advanced science (often for kids) it's surprising how quickly one can get an update on current thinking in pretty much any area, enough to look as though you know what you're talking about.

For building scientific credibility there's an old shyster's trick: sprinkle into the fantasy science some little known true facts or allusions for the reader who happens to be informed.

Second off, most people live lives where this kind of deep knowledge is not present in their minds when they wander through it. If you have a character lob a nuclear weapon at someone, you the writer might need to know just what its effect will be, but the character doesn't have to explain in detail how the bomb works---and a lot of them do, to an unhealthy extreme.

I think if you have a fascination with space, you should take some time to learn a bit about it. Even if you never plan on using all the technical jargon, it's nice when one of the minor characters has the ability to mention an event horizon and it mean the point of no return for a black hole.

My only suggestion is to avoid any form of *cough cough* science you have seen on star trek. Transporters don't work. You might convince me if you have a device at BOTH ends...but you can't turn atoms into energy and shift that energy to another spot and reconvert them back to atoms without some hardware to do that changing process. It was a nice special effect and quite convenient for a tv show...but it is pure fantasy.

I do believe that if you want to write a genre, you should be a reader of that genre. I've been reading some of Jack McDevitt's books, and while he does have some of the science in there, it isn't hard scifi. I've been rather impressed.

I personally prefer not getting the whole science background of how the hover car works--I can accept it does without it.

Often the problem with creating advances, is extrapolating the effects these things may have on a culture and--in the really long term--our biology.

I understand, and have usually erred on the side of caution. However, I needed to do some science research for my last short story, and have now embarked on writing a hard to semi-hard SF story.

I have found that I actually like the research that goes into writing that kind of story. I agree with the above posters. You can look and taste and not have to get a PhD in astrophysics to understand the basics between redshifts and blushifts in light transmitted from a star (one just means you're moving away from the star, and the other means you're moving towards it).

But, everybody is different in their comfort level with various topics. I've been doing a lot of research on brain chemistry, memory storage, and electro-chemical information transfer. It doesn't mean I can talk about it if the research isn't right in front of me. It just means that my story (which isn't actually about any of those things) will seem more plausible when I invent characters and develop situations in which those things play a part.

I guess that's how I see the difference, and it seems like most of the folks above are of a similar idea...

Hope this helps. Gotta tell you (even without being paid to provide the plug), Wikipedia is a godsend for this kind of thing. Particularly with its interelated links. You can go from white dwarfs to the 50 closest starts to earth to how quasars are thought to develop in about three clicks. I use it shamelessly in my researching.

T2

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Transporters don't work. You might convince me if you have a device at BOTH ends...but you can't turn atoms into energy and shift that energy to another spot and reconvert them back to atoms without some hardware to do that changing process. It was a nice special effect and quite convenient for a tv show...but it is pure fantasy.

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One of the things I've never felt quite satisfied with in sci fi is that most do not deal with the theory of relativity. If you're traveling at near the speed of light, you should be aging less quickly than those on the planets, right? This is the last I learned of it--maybe there have been further advances. Most sci fi tends to ignore this, or pretend technology has over come it somehow, but I never felt that was quite right.

The title stems from Asimov's several references to Clarke's statement that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Asimov explores the reverse of this statement and applies it to his works of fantasy.

As far as believeability, just look at it this way: if you could believe it, chances are that open-minded readers could as well.

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One of the things I've never felt quite satisfied with in sci fi is that most do not deal with the theory of relativity. If you're traveling at near the speed of light, you should be aging less quickly than those on the planets, right? This is the last I learned of it--maybe there have been further advances. Most sci fi tends to ignore this, or pretend technology has over come it somehow, but I never felt that was quite right.

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Far be it, you have not been reading enough of the proper scifi. The good writers do ensure to include it if the story calls for it. It really depends on the story as to how relativity takes hold. If the story uses some form of faster than light travel, then relativity is negated (or maybe it shouldn't be...hmmm, I'll have to give that some thought), so only ships traveling near light speed will notice the shit. There has also been more modern theories that calculate the time dilation curve to be steeper than originally thought, which would mean that you would not see real time dilation until past 85% the speed of light (I forget the exact figure but it was in that range). The end result would be most ships would only have minimal time dilation.

I like wormholes myself (and not the stargate kind either), but to really add wormholes there has to be the proper consideration of space time. One thing star trek voyager did manage to throw in correctly with a wormhole that traveled back through time. See, the origin point has to be in the space time of the creator (if they want to use it) but the endpoint can be anywhere in space and time. Time is the movement of the universe, so if you can find a point in time prior to or forward of the spot you are in, you could travel through time.

And, for a book that does handle relativity - in its own way - try the Forever War by joe haldeman. Very nifty. It was written in the 70s, and was, in author quotes, not meant to be about the vietnam war, but somehow was. I find it interesting how a sci-fi writer of the times was affected by the times he lived in, and explored the theme in a different venue - a futuristic world. That to me is the power of sci-fi, and why I prefer it as a genre.

Martin goes on to point out the bulk of SF stories, several classics, and his stories too, are Bat Durston stories, and whatever SF detail they have is just window dressing.

I feel more confident in writing SF, knowing someone in whose footsteps I followed actually thinks it's okay to do this.

[edited to add something to the last sentence]

But even for those you need to be fairly comfortable writing about technology to some degree. I'm not and not willing to spend the huge amount of time working on becoming comfortable with it.

But if you want to write it, then you should. Find a type that you're comfortable with though.

He makes the point that Roddenberry had to add Warp Drive so the show could run weekly with the same characters. It wouldn't do to have weekly episodes with a different crews that spanned hundreds of years because last weeks crew got old and died on the way to this week's planet. (Who knows if Roddenberry was actually thinking this, but its still a valid point. The made-up science was necessary.)

He goes through much of the technology in the show, even using the technical manuals (because the show doesn't explain the science-or-nonscience behind the devices usually) and discusses the science used.

http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun/startrek.html#warp

I need to make a list of good articles and issues.

EDIT: Found it, online: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/blinded-by-science/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

[This message has been edited by Vanderbleek (edited November 29, 2007).]

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Well, if Star Trek can be considered hard science fiction...

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Melissa Scott, "Dreaming Metal" and some others.

Also Ursula K LeGuin, "Decision at Doona" and others; and Anne McCaffrey's "The Ship Who Sang".

But you're right, hard SF is mostly a man's world, and like most worlds without women, lacking.

Pat

Edit: I find it sooo boring when writers meander on for pages about technology. I was joking about women writing this stuff though. There aren't many, but I have no doubt there are a few. I am generally not a science fiction fan. The science fiction I like is the exception (Remnant Population) rather than the rule and always about the people and not technology.

I mention Remnant Population because it happens to be one of my favorite books of any genre. Here's a description. http://home.earthlink.net/~karen20000/RemnantPop.htm

More people should read it so I recommend it at every opportunity. But it's not hard science fiction and is entirely character driven.

For me, "hard" SF is when the science is so involved in the story that taking it away or minimizing it in any significant way would make the plot completely incomprehensible, and the science is somewhat plausible.

"Soft" sci-fi would then be things where the science and technology merely provide a backdrop, and/or the science is highly dubious.

While I suppose some hard SF (since it is on more of a continuum than some vaste divide) might be character driven, I suspect that would be an exception. I personally wouldn't class Ship as hard or Remnant. All of the emphasis to me seems to be on the charcters. But that's a thoroughly uneducated opinion since I'm a long way from an expert on science fiction. I don't read much of it and I have only written one piece in my entire life.

Edit: And I personally would consider Clarke as a writer of hard SF and would put 2001 in that subgenre. The emphasis is certainly on the technology.