View Full Version : I'm writing...sci-fi? (Or, "Help!")
I've noticed that most sci-fi is dominated by strong male characters designed to appeal to men, with the occasional strong female character designed to appeal to...men. (Throw in a token minority and an inexplicably human alien and you've got your starship a crew!) Why the sci-fi community is then surprised that it is so male-dominated is beyond me. This has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, where sci-fi (and fantasy, outside of "paranormal romance") is presumed to appeal to men almost exclusively by default, leading to more and more male-oriented works being created, which (when Stripperific Space Bitches inevitably falls to take with female demographics) leads more content creators and consumers to presume that sci-fi is inherently masculine, which leads to more male-oriented works, &c. This cycle colors everybody's perceptions of the genre, and is loaded with stereotypes and unfortunate implications all around (is the reason sci-fi isn't more popular with women because science itself is intrinsically masculine? Really?).
I want to take that cycle, fuck it, and then throw a wrench in it. I think all art worth doing should have a reason to be, should attempt to put a ding in the universe in its own small way, and I think it's a shame that young girls might be turned off from liking sci-fi (or worse, the sciences) because all they see are Scantily Clad Space Hooker X or Cyberpunk Razorgirl in Tight Leather X. I'm not a great writer, not even a writer, really, and I'll probably never be the most clever or original. But if I could make science just that much less of a sausage party, I think I'd be okay with whatever criticisms I got.
We all need heroes to inspire us, and there's a lack of intelligent, fleshed-out, complicated heroines in sci-fi. (This is why Contact is my favorite sci-fi movie. Send hate mail here.) And so...I'm writing sci-fi?
Specifically, a five-part miniseries, with the hope of it becoming a substantially less mini series if things go well (the episode titles spell out P-I-L-O-T ;)). Both the genre and the medium are new to me, but I reasoned the best way to get a story out of the bookstore's sci-fi ghetto is to not make it a book, and I've been dying to experiment with serial storytelling for some time. ("No, not experiments with serial storytelling!" *explosion* LOST.)
It's been going okay so far (well, not for the crew!), the conflict is natural and plentiful, and the miniseries format gives me ample opportunity to introduce the characters at the small cost of ensuring that the show will never see production. I'm finding the territory not entirely unfamiliar, as the current sci-fi genre seems be prone to many of the weaknesses of fantasy, namely sameness and over-emphasis of setting and showing off the writer's research over things like characters and plot. (The trick, of course, is to write something that's captivating as a down-to-Earth character drama first, but it's much easier to hide behind the literary equivalent of special effects.)
But there's challenges involved in writing a story that's set in Our World but still fantastical. Like, math. I was hoping one of you could help me out on that regard.
Okay, so, the best thing about writing sci-fi as opposed to fantasy is obviously robots, and of course I had to have one. (Well, more than one, but one "main" one.) I won't bore you (any more than I have :o) with the details, but he's based on three processors, with a combined 18 petaFLOPS of processing power (a multiple of nine, significant? In one of my stories? No way!). The most powerful of his processors runs at 12 petaFLOPS.
That is, of course, far more powerful than even any massive supercomputing cluster today, and it's one processor that has to fit inside the chest cavity of a bulky but humanoid robot and run on batteries without exploding. What I want to know is, with reasonable assumptions made regarding Moore's law and the like, about when would such a processor be available (using Earth technology)? I can't quite figure out the maths myself. I get that it's probably going to be a very vague estimate but I just want to make sure it's sometime later than next week but before the heat death of the universe. Are we talking, like, 50 years, or 500, or...?
I'm trying to avoid a situation like where The Computer on a 23rd century starship has "over a million transistors!" or something, but I don't want to be implausible either. It's all backstory but it's Symbolically Significant and I'd like the series to be more grounded, so I don't want to just use meaningless units (or unit-less numbers).
Thanks for reading, or skimming, or doing whatever it is people do instead of reading these days. (Watching TV?)
P.S. The working title of the series is "Still," though people who follow me on Twitter may know the real title. ;) I'll try to avoid talking about it too much. :o
alcimedes
2010-06-08, 21:35
I would guess that you're more likely to hit quantum computing which would provide more 'power' for a robot, than a traditional present day processor reaching 12 petaflops of processing power, but I'm sure one of our more technically inclined members would be able to chime in with better, actual data.
I think the question should be answered by a girl :p
I would guess that you're more likely to hit quantum computing which would provide more 'power' for a robot, than a traditional present day processor reaching 12 petaflops of processing power, but I'm sure one of our more technically inclined members would be able to chime in with better, actual data.
Would quantum computers still use FLOPS to measure power or something else (QuOPS?)? I must confess I don't know much about quantum anything. I know that they have qubits, which just sounds funny to me. Ha ha, qubits.
I wanted to avoid using technology that would be too alien or require too big of a breakthrough to have a scientific basis, i.e., magic. "The robot's 'brain' was a giant glowing neurocrystal!" sounds suspiciously similar to "The doll's 'brain' was a giant glowing Crystal of the Gods!" That was my reasoning behind my "like what we have now, but better" thinking. But I'm not at all a computer person so I have no idea if that makes any sense. Maybe the Intel Quentium is right around the corner, I dunno.
ezkcdude
2010-06-08, 22:10
1.21 Gigawatts.
ezkcdude
2010-06-08, 22:11
Ok, so find out how many FLOPS a human brain does, and that will be roughly your answer. Apparently, Kurzweil said it's 20 quadrillion FLOPS (20 teraFLOPS, I think). (http://illuminati.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/2015-a-machine-that-thinks-as-fast-as-the-human-brain/) I'd go with that.
I think the question should be answered by a girl :p
Ha ha :)
Ok, so find out how many FLOPS a human brain does, and that will be roughly your answer.
I'm not asking how many FLOPS the robot brain needs, but when a 12 petaFLOP processor might be available. Maybe that's working backwards, but characters > setting, so...
And the robot isn't really designed to emulate a human, because that would sort of be a waste of a character, no? ;) It'd be like the inexplicably human aliens mentioned above.
The ship's autopilot runs at 90 petaFLOPS, but it's a large array of processors, so that's different.
ezkcdude
2010-06-08, 22:24
robo, I made a mistake. I meant to write 20 petaFLOPS.
The #1 supercomputer in the world right now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#The_systems_ranked_.231_since_1993) does a little over 2 petaFLOPS peak. It has over 200,000 CPUs. If the brain does 20 petaFLOPS, that's like 2,000,000 cores. Intense, dude.
You may want to bump that up a few orders of magnitude. Say 20 exaFLOPS.
I like the realisim approach. I don't have an answer for you (math is above my pay grade) but I'll pitch it to my NASA friends tomorrow and see what they have to say.
ezkcdude
2010-06-08, 22:29
robo, if you do write a scene where FLOPS are used, don't dare explain to the audience what that acronym stands for.
robo, I made a mistake. I meant to write 20 petaFLOPS.
So, wait. My totally-stabbing-in-the-dark symbolically-minded choice of the robot's processing power (18 petaFLOPS total) just happened to almost match Kurzweil says the human brain runs? Interesting!
You may want to bump that up a few orders of magnitude. Say 20 exaFLOPS.
Bump what up and why?
The most powerful single processor that's mentioned in the story, IBM's Blue Will, is currently set to run at 1000 petaFLOPS. But that's later. :)
I like the realisim approach. I don't have an answer for you (math is above my pay grade) but I'll pitch it to my NASA friends tomorrow and see what they have to say.
OMG NASA friends? Sweet! :D
robo, if you do write a scene where FLOPS are used, don't dare explain to the audience what that acronym stands for.
This is all back-story, like "series bible"-type stuff. It's only mentioned in passing, I just want to be consistent so that things don't change wildly from episode to episode like on some other shows. ;)
I have no intention on launching into a lengthy explanation on what FLOPS actually are, don't worry. That'd be boring, and I'm not one of those writers who writes just to show off their research.
ezkcdude
2010-06-08, 22:44
So, wait. My totally-stabbing-in-the-dark symbolically-minded choice of the robot's processing power (18 petaFLOPS total) just happened to almost match Kurzweil says the human brain runs? Interesting!
Bump what up and why?
The most powerful single processor that's mentioned in the story, IBM's Blue Will, is currently set to run at 1000 petaFLOPS. But that's later. :)
1 exaFLOP = 1000 petaFLOPS
1 exaFLOP = 1000 petaFLOPS
Yes, but A) not switching units makes it easier for non-technically-minded viewers to compare (1000 is obviously more than 100, but an exa- is less obviously more than 100 peta-) and B) as the most powerful single processor in the world, the Blue Will would only be compared to petaFLOPS-class processors, and could thus comfortably share their already-familiar units, just as the first GB drives were dual-branded 1000 MB. Also, C) Symbolism.
(I knew someone would post that, and I was ready. :p)
But I'm still curious what you meant when you said I should "bump that up"? Were you referring to the robot's CPU(s), or the autopilot's? And why?
Wikipedia says that a Core i7 can do 107 GigaFLOPS, so about 10^11 FLOPS.
If we make the assumption that personal computers have been doubling in power every year since their introduction then we can say that computing power is increasing at an exponential rate.
So, looking at 10^11 = 2^x and solving for x should tell us how many years it took to get to our current 10^11 FLOPS.
10^11 = 2^x
x = 36.5412...
So, roughly 36 years after the introduction of the personal computer which sounds about right.
Assuming your robot isn't anything special and is using off the shelf processors, then we can simply replace 10^11 with 10^15 petaFLOPS and solve for x again.
10^15 = 2^x
x = 49.8289...
So, in approximately 15 years our personal computers should be capable of petaFLOPS.
Thanks Wolfram Alpha :D
At the current rate of exponential growth in computing power, personal computers should be at the petaFLOPS level in about 50 years.
10^15 = 2^x
x = 49.8289...
Thanks Wolfram Alpha :D
Yayayayayayayayay thx so much :)
Not sure if you caught it but I rewrote my answer above, I forgot that the 50 years was from the first PC, not from now.
15 years in the future might be a little close for science fiction, and due to the nature of exponential growth, even bumping it up to the exaFLOPS level only takes another 10 years!
I'm sure you'll think of something ;)
So, in approximately 15 years our personal computers should be capable of petaFLOPS.
Wait, seriously? So, like, even though massive computing clusters with hundreds of thousands of processors hit about 2 petaFLOPS, we'll have PCs like that in just 15 years? I get the whole "exponential" thing, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right.
If we make the assumption that personal computers have been doubling in power every year since their introduction
Is that a reasonable assumption, though? I thought Moore's law doubled every two years. :confused:
Assuming your robot isn't anything special and is using off the shelf processors
This is partially true; he's pretty high-end but still a mass-produced model, and he's also not the newest model. Of his three processors, the least powerful (at "just" 2 petaFLOPS) was added as a gimmick after his predecessor's sales didn't meet expectations. So this is an environment where that can, y'know, happen.
No petting flops! No petting flops! Only exxon flops! WHY THE PETTING FLOPS.
Wait, seriously? So, like, even though massive computing clusters with hundreds of thousands of processors hit about 2 petaFLOPS, we'll have PCs like that in just 15 years? I get the whole "exponential" thing, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right.
I don't really know, in 1993 (17 years ago) the fastest supercomputer was doing 143 gigaFLOPS which is only a little faster than a Core i7 now.
Is that a reasonable assumption, though? I thought Moore's law doubled every two years. :confused:
It really doesn't matter what the constant being used is (whether 1 year or 2 years in this case) an exponential algorithm will always shoot up after relatively small number of iterations. What this means is that if you said that it doubled every 2 years instead of 1, then within 30 years we would have petaFLOP processing capacity and 20 years after that exaFLOP capacity, and 10 years after that zettaFLOP and so on. The exponential algorithm continues to grow at a pace that makes the initial constant irrelevant.
Also, there's a couple of problems with Moore's law.
1. It's not really a law, just an observation by Moore that seems to be holding up so far.
2. It has to do with transistor density on dies rather than computer speed.
So, is computer speed increasing at an exponential pace? So far yes, but when will it end? If you know the answer to that then I'm sure Intel has a job for you ;)
In fact, it seems Intel can now arbitrarily add cores so there shouldn't be any limit to the number of FLOPS a chip can do but what meaningful work can it do?
This turns the problem into a software problem. That is, each added core linearly increases the amount of operations a CPU can perform (2 cores are twice as fast as 1 core and so on) but our ability to create software to take advantage of this remains limited.
In fact, if we look at your robot intelligence as a software problem rather than a hardware problem I think the time scales would become much larger, and advances in software definitely have not followed an exponential growth pattern. Think about what computers could do in 1993 and think about what they can do today, not really that much different - there are still programs actively being used today that were created the 1970s!
Your robot could very well be processing 12 petaFLOPS in the next 30 years or so, but will humans have created the necessary software in that same time? Hopefully we create true AI in my lifetime but nobody even knows if it's a solvable problem :D
It really doesn't matter what the constant being used is (whether 1 year or 2 years in this case) an exponential algorithm will always shoot up after relatively small number of iterations. What this means is that if you said that it doubled every 2 years instead of 1, then within 30 years we would have petaFLOP processing capacity and 20 years after that exaFLOP capacity
Right, that's what I'm getting at. There's a bit of a difference between setting a story in the 2020s and setting it in the 2040s.
and 10 years after that zettaFLOP and so on.
Are you sure? I think if you doubled every two years, each SI prefix would continue to take 20 years to get through, since there are always ten "doublings" to get from 1 to ~1000 -- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. Note that this is true whether we're talking about mega, giga, tera, whatever -- there's always ten doublings, so if you double once every two years it'll always take twenty years. Each jump is twice the size of the last, of course, but each SI prefix is also far larger than the last. You'd only start moving through each successive SI prefix faster if you also accelerated the rate of doublings, like to being only one year apart, and then to six months, and then three, &c. Right?
So, is computer speed increasing at an exponential pace? So far yes, but when will it end? If you know the answer to that then I'm sure Intel has a job for you ;)
I wanted to know when it'd be possible based on what's happened "so far," that's all. Obviously in ten years we could hit a massive roadblock and advancement could slow drastically, but I didn't want that to have to happen for my numbers to make sense.
This turns the problem into a software problem. That is, each added core linearly increases the amount of operations a CPU can perform (2 cores are twice as fast as 1 core and so on) but our ability to create software to take advantage of this remains limited.
In fact, if we look at your robot intelligence as a software problem rather than a hardware problem I think the time scales would become much larger, and advances in software definitely have not followed an exponential growth pattern. Think about what computers could do in 1993 and think about what they can do today, not really that much different - there are still programs actively being used today that were created the 1970s!
Your robot could very well be processing 12 petaFLOPS in the next 30 years or so, but will humans have created the necessary software in that same time? Hopefully we create true AI in my lifetime but nobody even knows if it's a solvable problem :D
in the series, AI development is a huge industry, and the largest corporations in the series that don't exist today are AI development corporations (SUNRiSE and Unison, for those curious). Like today's computers and cars, the robots aren't homogenous -- a model might be designed by one company and assembled by another with parts from a third and fourth and AIs from a fifth through seventh, while an eighth sells "Emotion Packs" based on popular manga characters and a ninth offers to design AIs based on your loved ones, &c. :)
(This is why Contact is my favorite sci-fi movie. Send hate mail here.)
Jesus Christ... I keep clicking it and clicking it and oh god why won't it work?? :wtf:
As for performance scales, consider this:
The ENIAC in 1947 consumed 174,000 watts of power, weighed 27 tons, covered 63 m^2, and performed at roughly 350 flops.
Today, the Intel Core i7 consumes about 100 watts of power when under full load, weighs a few grams, covers a few square cm, and (as mentioned) can theoretically perform ~100,000,000,000 flops.
Are you sure? I think if you doubled every two years, each SI prefix would continue to take 20 years to get through, since there are always ten "doublings" to get from 1 to ~1000 -- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. Note that this is true whether we're talking about mega, giga, tera, whatever -- there's always ten doublings, so if you double once every two years it'll always take twenty years. Each jump is twice the size of the last, of course, but each SI prefix is also far larger than the last. You'd only start moving through each successive SI prefix faster if you also accelerated the rate of doublings, like to being only one year apart, and then to six months, and then three, &c. Right?
Oops, you're right :)
in the series, AI development is a huge industry, and the largest corporations in the series that don't exist today are AI development corporations (SUNRiSE and Unison, for those curious). Like today's computers and cars, the robots aren't homogenous -- a model might be designed by one company and assembled by another with parts from a third and fourth and AIs from a fifth through seventh, while an eighth sells "Emotion Packs" based on popular manga characters and a ninth offers to design AIs based on your loved ones, &c. :)
Sounds like it will be fun, I like a good corporatist future (in fiction that is).
And before anyone points out that ENIAC wasn't transistor-based and that Moore's Law doesn't necessarily apply, consider that over longer periods of time one shouldn't be constrained to a specific form of processing technology. Just as we went from vacuum tubes to transistors, we'll eventually move from microprocessors to quantum processors or some other technology that will advance us leaps and bounds.
@Brad: So you're saying that 12 petaFLOPS isn't that big of a deal, then? :lol: It has to be a bit more than 15 years out, I mean the show might actually be airing then and that would be awkward. 30 years out would be okay, but I might bump everything up an SI prefix just to be safe. Hmm.
Heck, no, not a big deal. :)
Shoot, just think about small time scales. Anyone else remember in '99 when Jobs was touting how the then-bleeding-edge G4 processor was classified as a "supercomputer" because it cranked in 1-4 gigaflops?
1 to 4 gigaflops!
A mere decade later, the i7 performs 25-100 times that many flops.
I dunno about you, but that kind of advancement in just a short span of one's lifetime is pretty mind-boggling. :)
Heck, no, not a big deal. :)
Shoot, just think about small time scales. Anyone else remember in '99 when Jobs was touting how the then-bleeding-edge G4 processor was classified as a "supercomputer" because it cranked in 1-4 gigaflops?
1 to 4 gigaflops!
A mere decade later, the i7 performs 25-100 times that many flops.
I dunno about you, but that kind of advancement in just a short span of one's lifetime is pretty mind-boggling. :)
It is (and that's why I love technology), but in this case we're talking about a CPU that has to be about ten times as powerful as not a prior CPU but a 300,000 CPU cluster. That would take more than a decade, right? :confused:
True, good point. That would take a bit of time. :) My brain is still waking up and wasn't quite putting the scales into context with all you'd described here.
It is (and that's why I love technology), but in this case we're talking about a CPU that has to be about ten times as powerful as not a prior CPU but a 300,000 CPU cluster. That would take more than a decade, right? :confused:
True, good point. That would take a bit of time. :) My brain is still waking up and wasn't quite putting the scales into context with all you'd described here.
I don't really know, in 1993 (17 years ago) the fastest supercomputer was doing 143 gigaFLOPS which is only a little faster than a Core i7 now.
I know I was off on the doubling thing but 17 years ago the worlds fastest computer (Intel Paragon) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Paragon) really was using 2048 processors to process 143 gigaFLOPS, today we can do that in a Core i7.
More than a decade sure, but probably not more than two decades.
True, good point. That would take a bit of time. :) My brain is still waking up and wasn't quite putting the scales into context with all you'd described here.
Oh, OK. I was getting a little confused there (maybe my brain is falling asleep, haha). I'm like "I know technology advances quickly, but that quickly!? Damn!" By the time anyone built a building to house their supercomputer cluster they wouldn't need it any more because a desktop would be more powerful, ha ha.
If you're ever feeling more awake (and bored)...do you agree that 30 years (until the existence of a single 12 petaFLOPS processor) sounds about right-ish? Or is that too long? I think I'm going to leave it peta- for now, but I could always bump it up to exa- if I wanted to buy another twenty years. :)
The important thing is mainly the numbers. "peta-" fit the symbolism the best but that part isn't integral. I'd rather be not crazy unbelievable.
In semi-related news: Scientists embedd a biologically powered transistor inside a cell membrane (http://news.discovery.com/tech/transistor-cell-membrane-machine.html)
The research could lead to new types of man-machine interactions where embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells.
"This device is as close to the seamless marriage of biological and electronic structures as anything else that people did before," said Aleksandr Noy, a scientist at the University of California, Merced who is a co-author on the recent ACS Nano Letters. "We can take proteins, real biological machines, and make them part of a working microelectronic circuit."
...
To this basic cellular structure the UC scientists added an ion pump, a biological device that pumps charged atoms of calcium, potassium, and other elements into and out of the cell. Then they added a solution of adenosine tri-phosphate, or ATP, which fuels the ion pump.
The ion pump changes the electrical charge inside the cell, which then changes the electrical charge going through the transistor, which the scientists could measure and monitor.
And, yeah, 30 years seems reasonable. :)
(Hijacking the thread to rant about modern sci-fi with Robo's gracious permission and indirect complicity!)
Robo’s original post brings up some things that have generally been bothering me for some time when it comes to science fiction. Most of these bother me enough that I could do separate rants about each of them- and, in fact, I may wind up doing that eventually. But these are the highlights of the main things that bother me about modern science fiction.
1: The genre doesn’t know what the hell it is or wants to be.
What is science fiction? Ask 4 people and you’ll probably get 4 different answers. Set in space? Set in the future? Aliens? Rayguns? Spaceships? Robots? Events inexplicable without something that doesn’t exist in the current world of today? Can it be none of those things? The genre itself doesn’t seem to know what it is, and I think that leads to some problems. Like the camps that form up arguing about what it is. The fact that people have either widely varying definitions of science fiction, or that they hold the stereotyped view of it in modern culture (male-oriented aliens, spaceships, rayguns, and slutty women), gives the genre an identity crisis that I think harms it, because if you stick to the limited view of popular science fiction, I think you miss out on a lot of the potential of the genre.
That’s not to say that the stereotypes are bad, necessarily. I’m a Star Wars, Star Trek, classic Battlestar Galactica fan. I love my share of aliens, robots, fighter pilots IN SPACE, phasers and lasers, etc. I have no problem with it and it’s comfort food for me. You can also do some great things with the standards of the genre; David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, both spring to mind as military sci-fi with spaseships and lasers that’s done right. It’s just that that’s not all that the genre can offer.
(If you asked me, personally, I’d shoot the labels “science fiction” and “fantasy” and merge the works traditionally classified under both under the label of “speculative fiction”; fiction that dares to say “what if?” The fiction that decides to change an element (or elements) of the world we’re familiar with, and then explore the logical outgrowths of how things would change were those elements to be different. There’s just so many times where the line blurs that I’d rather not have there be a line at all.)
Some of my favorite science fiction are things like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series. Is Darkover science fiction? It takes place on a planet with low technology and high levels of what’s basically magic, but there’s also spaceships involved. That classes it into science fiction, but also blurs the line with fantasy somewhat; the Darkover novels set in the period of Darkovan history when Darkover has no contact with its spacefaring brethren would certainly be classed as fantasy if you didn’t know about the colonization of the planet, for example. So where does it fall?
Or take LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Clearly sci-fi, with the ansibles, spaceships, and aliens, and yet it is sometimes overlooked because it’s basically a xenoanthropological study of this society with a unique gender system. The science is really just a setting of trappings to legitimize the questions, rather than the focus of the story. Which leads me to…
2: Too often, the science becomes the focus.
There’s always a certain level of science and technology in science fiction. The problem is that there are occasions where authors get caught up in showing off their technology or how awesome their ships are, and they neglect the rest of the story. The rest of the story can become the vehicle with which to show off their cool research and development, and it neglects or even outright sacrifices things like characterization or plot.
Even some of the greats get caught in this trap. I love David Weber- I think he’s a master of compelling plot and vivid characterizations and I’m going to cite him later as doing several things right- but I don’t want to read pages about the technical details of Manticoran (or Havenite, or Solarian, or whoever) technology. I really don’t. I mean, yes, it can be important for the sake of the plot to know that the Manticorans have advanced fire control systems, or pods that allow them to throw more missiles, but we don’t need pages and pages on the technical details, or long descriptions of what the missiles are doing every time they get launched or some new technical wrinkle shows up. Save this kind of thing for your series bible or forum postings or tidbits for eager fans who want to know it. I just want to know who’s winning, losing, and getting killed in the battle, and the mass amounts of technical detail really get in the way, as far as I’m concerned.
In contrast, I really like Elizabeth Moon’s work. I really liked the Vatta’s War series because Moon gets into exactly the technical details you need to grasp the plot of the work, but she keeps it simple, accessible to readers, and doesn’t bog the story down with more than you need to know. I think that’s exactly how the science should be handled; make it clear it’s internally consistent and you know how it works, make the parts the reader needs to know to grasp what’s going on clear, and then get the science out of the way and get back to the meat of the work.
3: Characters
This is related strongly to 2. I don’t know what it is about science fiction, but I often find it terribly disappointing when it comes to characterization. People are puppets with faces and names, moving here and there to suit the demands of the plot. They have no independent existence, no motivations, and generally just don’t feel like real people. I’m thinking here not just of fiction, but of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Beyond Picard and Data and to an extent Word (mostly developed in Deep Space Nine), everyone else just felt like mouthpieces for the plot! They didn’t feel like actual vivid people who could really have been inhabiting this place. In contrast, Deep Space Nine handled this wonderfully with even secondary characters. The secondary characters like Jake Sisko were so much more defined than “primary” TNG characters like Troi or Crusher or LaForge that I want to cry. There was potential in the character concepts, how did it all fall through?
Now, I admit to being really biased here, because I do a very characterization-based writing style, and I know it. Before I even have a plot- and often I don’t have plot- I have characters, and I try to make them as three-dimensional as possible. The audience needs someone to sympathize with, and it’s a lot easier to sympathize with and root for- or hate- someone who’s got real feelings, flaws, motivations, and a personality, rather than a cardboard cutout moving about on their little popsicle stick along the rails of the plot.
(I’m not going to bother listing bad examples. We can all think of some.)
There are examples of good characterization, of course. I refer again to Elizabeth Moon and David Weber; both of these authors have strong, dynamic characters who really feel like people. Even better, both authors aren’t afraid to have their characters screw up. They don’t have them be author’s darlings and always draw all the right conclusions from the data. I can think of times Kylara Vatta did something stupid, or Honor Harrington misread things and caused problems for herself. In terms of television, I refer again to Deep Space Nine’s entire cast.
Characters need to be rich and vivid. They need to have flaws, of course, or else become a Mary Sue character. But they also need to have motivations and a life beyond the page. They need to seem like real people that you could sit down with and have a conversation with. They need to be shaped by their history, their surroundings, their experiences. They need to sometimes make bad decisions because that’s in their nature to do so, rather than do everything perfect- even when if they were a real person they wouldn’t have- because the plot demands they be perfect. And this is something that can be all too rare in science fiction.
3a: Female characters.
This may have to be a rant all its own, because it makes me want to eat things. It really does. First, because too often a female character is either hyper-feminized and sexualized to the point of bordering on the caricature, or are basically a male character with a female name and boobs attached. Second, because female characters almost always get paired up romantically with a male character, while male characters can take or leave romance; there’s often the implication the female character needs a relationship to have a fulfilled life, while there’s never such a pressure on the male side- there, the romance is a token, a trophy conquest. There’s rarely a realistic depiction of romance on either side, but the pressure is slightly less awful on the male characters.
This is in large part because of the male-dominated nature of science fiction, both in terms of authorship and readership. There’s also a flaw in the general popular perception of science fiction. I don’t want to be sexist and say that male writers can’t write female characters successfully, because people like David Weber clearly prove me wrong. But I think that male authors tend to write more male characters and add a female as sort of a “token” female because they should have one, and less because they happen to have a successful concept. (There are, of course, occasions where female writers write very female-dominated works and have token male characters. Writing sexism goes both ways, I’m afraid.)
Readership plays a role because, frankly, there are vocal aspects of the readerdom that are male and are only looking for female characters to serve as their titillation, and not to be active, dynamic people in their own right. This has been changing as time goes on, but there still is a very strong social stigma of science fiction as a male social activity that hasn’t entirely been worn away by time and female readers and authors. The problem is that it’s hard to change that without fiction that appeals to women and non-traditional science fiction readers, and the problem is that without those readers such fiction doesn’t sell or it doesn’t sell well enough to be heard about, and the genre keeps getting stuck in this rut that hasn’t changed yet.
I want to see female characters where their femaleness doesn’t matter. I want to see a character who was conceived of as a character first and a woman second, rather than “oh I need a girl, what should she do?” I take Weber’s Honor Harrington as a great example here; Honor is a deeply fleshed out character who rings first and foremost as a real, actual person, and only second registers as a woman. Likewise, Moon’s Kylara Vatta, or Haris Serrano, are strong characters who are people first women second.
This may seem counterintuitive when I’ve complained about the fact that women in sci-fi are sometimes men with a female name. But in those cases, it genuinely feels like it could have been a male character with no change; like the character was written, and then someone decided to go “oh nevermind they’re a GIRL” and went back and changed all the names and didn’t change anything else.
I want a sense of characters, male or female, where the author actually sat down and had a deep rich character concept and built around it. I don’t want the sense that this is the token character tossed in for sex appeal or a false sense of diversity. I want characters who are fleshed out, fallible, and interesting first and foremost. I shouldn’t get the feeling that this girl is here so that there is a girl, and not there because she belongs there.
I could keep going on, but this has gotten really long; apologies in advance for the TL;DR. And anyways, these are the 3 things that have been bothering me most lately as I read. I wanted to do something on culture and on developing proper aliens (or fictional human cultures, for that matter!), but that I think will come another time. These are just what came up when I read Robo’s OP.
1: The genre doesn’t know what the hell it is or wants to be.
This is one of my pet peeves too. To me -- and I know I'd get hate mail for this elsewhere -- sci-fi (like fantasy and western) is almost more of a setting than a genre. "Sci-fi" isn't a type of narrative, like drama, comedy, mystery, or romance. When you write sci-fi, you have to be writing in one of those genres (or others, like lit fic). You can't write "just" sci-fi. That would be like listing spaceship specifications without any characters or narrative (which some creators admittedly come close to).
(If you asked me, personally, I’d shoot the labels “science fiction” and “fantasy” and merge the works traditionally classified under both under the label of “speculative fiction”; fiction that dares to say “what if?”)
Personally, I'd go a step further and just classify them as fiction, as all fiction (by definition) deals with what's not real, even if most of the time it's more down-to-earth, like "what if Sue had a terrible divorce and had to learn to believe in life after love?" or "what if there was a secret message coded in Renaissance artworks?"
The sci-fi/fantasy aisle is the only aisle in a bookstore where a laugh-a-minute comedy and a tearjerking existential drama and a 3,000 page war chronology could be found side by side. This is a way of putting those stories into a ghetto where they can be more easily dismissed, much like considering "animation" a genre when it's really only a way of producing the picture. The saddest thing is that the sci-fi/fantasy community has for the most part internalized this dismissal, leading some authors to believe that there "sci-fi" is a narrative genre. This has directly lead to one of my biggest problem with sci-fi and especially fantasy, which is sameness. ("You can write about anything you can dream of -- why are you all writing about romanticized versions of medieval Europe?")
Ideally, mysteries set in space would be shelved with mysteries, not with romances that just happen to take place in space. Sci-fi devoted toward asking/answering the Big Questions would be shelved with the philosophical fiction, and sci-fi devoted solely toward showing of the author's research would be shelved with the bad fiction.
2: Too often, the science becomes the focus.
A litmus test that many speculative fiction authors have a problem with: Take away everything fantastical and see if it works. Set it in Iowa. If it still works, if the characters are still interesting, you have a good narrative. A good sci-fi story has to be a good story first, and many writers seem to have a problem with this ("you're dismissing what makes our genre great!"), but it's true. It doesn't matter how well thought-out your interstellar warp scheme is, that won't make up for a mediocre everything else.
For all the talk about "hard" sci-fi versus "soft" sci-fi, it sort of amazes me that it's assumed that "hard" and "soft" modify science, and that's the distinction within the genre, not modifiers for fiction, like "science mystery fiction." It's sort of a warped (ha!) perspective.
With many scenes in "Still" -- especially in the pilot -- a just-tuning-in viewer wouldn't have a clue that it's "sci-fi," because those scenes aren't. This is intentional. Not every scene involves science. It amazes me how much sci-fi focuses only on the alien aspects of the universe, as if all the characters have stopped having lives. Domestic disputes aren't going anywhere, sadly, and a well-written argument will always be more interesting than a "realistic" rocket booster launch sequence.
3: Characters
This is really my biggest problem with most sci-fi and fantasy, and (along with its insular focus) probably the biggest reason why it's not popular with more people. Sometimes it seems if you write a book in the sci-fi genre, you're essentially writing a book for people who don't care about characterization -- naturally a small segment of population.
Before I even have a plot- and often I don’t have plot- I have characters, and I try to make them as three-dimensional as possible.
Me too. Aside: It shocks me how many people ask "So what's more important, characters or plot?" as if they weren't just both sides of the narrative coin. In very well-written stories, "plot" can usually be defined as how the characters grow. If you don't have characters, you don't have a narrative -- you just have a bunch of stuff that happens to people nobody cares about. But people always act like my answer is wishy-washy, so I usually add this:
People will like a story for its plot, but they'll only love it for its characters.
Sci-fi and fantasy creators usually don't understand this, and they instead tend to focus on action, plot gimmicks ("It turns out that the fairy tale world is really North Dakota in the future!) or philosophical quandaries. You can build a good story on these (The Matrix), but they had better be really damn good. Building a story on characters is a much safer bet.
3a: Female characters.
I've already covered this, but naturally, I agree with every word.
The problem is that it’s hard to change that without fiction that appeals to women and non-traditional science fiction readers, and the problem is that without those readers such fiction doesn’t sell or it doesn’t sell well enough to be heard about, and the genre keeps getting stuck in this rut that hasn’t changed yet.
...and this is the most depressing thing. And not just for fiction: if you believe that art has the power to change the world, which I really do, then you also have to believe that it goes both ways, and that art can changed the world for the worse. I'm trying to think of sci-fi heroines that I'd want some purely theoretical daughter of mine to look up to, and it's hard to think of many. (It's hard to think of many good male role models, too, but this mainly due to poor characterization. And all the space hookers.) And without realistic heroines to inspire young women, I fear life might end up imitating art. :\
I want to see female characters where their femaleness doesn’t matter.
Or rather, where their femaleness (and all the hopes and fears and insecurities in a male-dominated world that it entails) does matter, in dictating the realistic motivations of a character who (*gasp*) exists as their own complete, fleshed-out entity, rather than existing only in relation to the statue-esque men.
I want a sense of characters, male or female, where the author actually sat down and had a deep rich character concept and built around it. I don’t want the sense that this is the token character tossed in for sex appeal or a false sense of diversity. I want characters who are fleshed out, fallible, and interesting first and foremost. I shouldn’t get the feeling that this girl is here so that there is a girl, and not there because she belongs there.
Really, a "false sense of diversity" is a common problem with sci-fi, usually due to the poor characterization -- the black guy really is The Black Guy, the girl really is The Chick, and the lesbian really is only there for the Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss. It gets even worse when alien cultures are added, aliens who are both startling familiar and often inexplicably fascinated with us. The entire point of much sci-fi seems to be to state that, in the words of pictures for sad children, "In the future, being rich and white will be even more awesome."
This is one of my pet peeves too. To me -- and I know I'd get hate mail for this elsewhere -- sci-fi (like fantasy and western) is almost more of a setting than a genre. "Sci-fi" isn't a type of narrative, like drama, comedy, mystery, or romance. When you write sci-fi, you have to be writing in one of those genres (or others, like lit fic). You can't write "just" sci-fi. That would be like listing spaceship specifications without any characters or narrative (which some creators admittedly come close to).
This is a good way of thinking about it. Sci-fi and fantasy are the settings in which you build your story, while the real genre is what the story's actually about. This is one of the things I really like about paranormal romance as a subgenre- it admits what it is openly and proudly. It's romance first and foremost with paranormal setting and character types. Science fiction and mainstream fantasy could learn a LOT from PNR, actually, given that PNR tends to have a strong focus on the characters (for the sake of the romance, naturally, but it's still valid.) I like to read some PNR authors and just skip the porn scenes and just read for the rich characterization and fantastic plot. But now we're digressing from the topic, sooo...
This has directly lead to one of my biggest problem with sci-fi and especially fantasy, which is sameness. ("You can write about anything you can dream of -- why are you all writing about romanticized versions of medieval Europe?")
This is definitely a large problem with the genres, and something I'm hoping to work on in my own work. I mean, I don't necessarily have a problem with it if you make it detailed enough to be interesting: I don't mind that Weber is doing "yet another space opera with two big multi-system giants" because he fleshes out Manticore and Haven and gives them distinct philosophies, social and economic systems, etc. What I do have a problem with is when there's two empires at war and they're both so alike you have to wonder what the hell they're arguing over.
In my fantasy world, for example, I'm trying to make distinct and obvious differences between the culture of the protagonists and the surrounding cultures. This involves developing things like a language, a religious system, a set of cultural beliefs and attitudes, etc. When I'm done fleshing that out, I'm going to draw at least the outlines of the culture and religion of the other nations, so that I can make clear contrasts. It's still your standard "there are mages and a class system" society, but I'm trying to give it enough detail and richness to really make it unique.
If it still works, if the characters are still interesting, you have a good narrative. A good sci-fi story has to be a good story first, and many writers seem to have a problem with this ("you're dismissing what makes our genre great!"), but it's true. It doesn't matter how well thought-out your interstellar warp scheme is, that won't make up for a mediocre everything else.
This, this, this, THIS.
It amazes me how much sci-fi focuses only on the alien aspects of the universe, as if all the characters have stopped having lives.
Again, amen. Human nature is going to be human nature, and there's going to be fears, hatreds, sex, love, friendship, jealousy, and all the other little bits of our nature in the future.
In very well-written stories, "plot" can usually be defined as how the characters grow. If you don't have characters, you don't have a narrative -- you just have a bunch of stuff that happens to people nobody cares about. But people always act like my answer is wishy-washy, so I usually add this:
People will like a story for its plot, but they'll only love it for its characters.
Another excellent point. And this is a huge problem with the genre. So often the characters are cutouts, and you don't really care what happens on either side. That's why I think Weber's late Honorverse novels are so successful; because he gets us into the head of the Havenites (the enemies) as well as the Manticorans, we start to sympathize for both sides, so it matters a lot more when everything blows the hell up.
Or rather, where their femaleness (and all the hopes and fears and insecurities in a male-dominated world that it entails) does matter, in dictating the realistic motivations of a character who (*gasp*) exists as their own complete, fleshed-out entity, rather than existing only in relation to the statue-esque men.
That works too. I'm just worried that someone trying to do that would be doing it badly and thus falling back into caricature. I'd love to see it done in the hands of the right writers, though.
Really, a "false sense of diversity" is a common problem with sci-fi, usually due to the poor characterization -- the black guy really is The Black Guy, the girl really is The Chick, and the lesbian really is only there for the Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss. It gets even worse when alien cultures are added, aliens who are both startling familiar and often inexplicably fascinated with us.
This is why I want to see better alien culture development and characterization. Don't make me go have to write my rant on that, I did my 2k for the day in the above post :P
Derailing slightly from the essay explosion and back to the year question. I know you already got an answer, but my NASA friend shot me a quick email and basically said it really won't be all that long at all:
According to SP, the machine will become operational next year and will have a theoretical peak computing capability of 16 petaflops. While this will supposedly be achievable by connecting up to 16,384 Power7 nodes, IBM doesn't expect the initial performance to surpass the 10-petaflops mark.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/IBM-Supercomputer-Blue-Waters-Illinois,9229.html
ezkcdude
2010-06-09, 15:54
Is science-fiction "great" when it transcends genre or defines it?
(My one-sentence question-as-response to the sci-fi debate.)
billybobsky
2010-06-09, 16:41
With the two points of data given in this thread so far, we have enough information with the assumption of an exponential increase in processor calcs per second to derive a base ten logarithmic lifetime of approximately 5.25 years. That is to say, the flops of a single processor increases 10 fold every ~5.25 years. You are asking how long until we have a single processor that runs at 12*10^15 flops from a single processor running at 120*10^9 flops. A similar calc gives 5 lifetimes (exactly) which corresponds to ~26.5 years.
Remember, however, that not all flops are equivalent, our brains are not interconnected identical neurons. The technology to develop processor designs that do better than simply simulating a brain versus actually emulating it hasn't been developed as of yet.
Thanks!
Totally unrelated question: Is it possible to give a character the same name as yourself and not have them be a total Mary Sue/Gary Stu? I just think the name fits. It's not like I'd be naming them in my honor or making them The Wesley or using them as a vehicle for wish fulfillment or anything. I mean, he's straight(ish) and he ends up with a woman (ew!). So yeah.
billybobsky
2010-06-10, 17:37
i think it's a bit odd. but whatever.
I don't think it's all that strange. When I used to write stuff (I should find time to do more) I would name characters Jason all the time. People often mistakenly call me Jason and it's just a name that always sounded good to me.
I don't think it's all that strange. When I used to write stuff (I should find time to do more) I would name characters Jason all the time. People often mistakenly call me Jason and it's just a name that always sounded good to me.
I just worry, because people look for meaning in weird places sometimes, and I don't want people to think that Character X is an Author Avatar and represents me just because we happen to share a name, or that he's supposed to somehow "be" me in the future or something. I mean, Stephen King has written enough stories for Castle Rock to be populated with dozens of Steves, but most authors generally try to avoid that sort of thing for those reasons (that, and the instant Sue Sirens that go off). Not that Stephen King doesn't have plenty of other still-obvious Author Avatars, but still.
It's just one of those things that only becomes a problem when you start writing stories in Our World. In my fantasy stories, A) nobody has English names, B) I write under a pseudonym anyway, and C) there's usually a clear author stand-in with the narrator figure. But none of those apply to sci-fi or television writing.
Of course, none of this matters because it's highly unlikely that viewers would ever know my name; the series wouldn't be billed as Roboman Whatever's Still unless I became the next Stephen King in the meantime. ;) But, you know, some people just like to worry...
By popular request, I give you:
The Secret to Writing Television
Are you ready?
L.U.S.T.
Long Unresolved Sexual Tension. It's what television runs on. All you need is one Mulder and one Scully and the L.U.S.T. produced can fuel the show for, well, exactly seven seasons, in that case. (Pity the show ran for nine.)
Now, it can be difficult to set up L.U.S.T., if you don't know the secret. There is a secret art to making L.U.S.T. blossom, as my sensei once told me, and as his sensei once told him. Here it is, in its original form of haiku:
Put seven people
On a fully enclosed set
With only six bunks
POW! Instant sexual tension. Spaceship, submarine, mysterious bunker -- it doesn't matter; your characters will be ricocheting off the walls, and each other, and producing the glorious byproduct of plot in the process. It's that easy.
L.U.S.T. is not to be confused with Long Overwrought Sexual Tension, which is what happens when you take too long and people stop caring about the resolution, as seen on...well, shows.
•••
While I was bizzumping this thread, I figured I'd also quote this bright individual, who also quotes Faulkner, and together they say everything I was trying to say earlier in the thread in far fewer words.
Clichés are not in themselves necessarily bad, but their overuse shows that the writer has forgotten what separates the strong tale from the hollow: "the human heart in conflict with itself," as Faulkner said. Where there is this conflict, the tale stands; where the conflict is absent, the tale falls flat, and in neither case does it matter how many ships get blown up.
From this nifty site. (http://www.geocities.ws/evilsnack/cliche.html)
Okay, so, the best thing about writing sci-fi as opposed to fantasy is obviously robots, and of course I had to have one. (Well, more than one, but one "main" one.) I won't bore you (any more than I have :o) with the details, but he's based on three processors, with a combined 18 petaFLOPS of processing power (a multiple of nine, significant? In one of my stories? No way!). The most powerful of his processors runs at 12 petaFLOPS.
That is, of course, far more powerful than even any massive supercomputing cluster today, and it's one processor that has to fit inside the chest cavity of a bulky but humanoid robot and run on batteries without exploding. What I want to know is, with reasonable assumptions made regarding Moore's law and the like, about when would such a processor be available (using Earth technology)? I can't quite figure out the maths myself. I get that it's probably going to be a very vague estimate but I just want to make sure it's sometime later than next week but before the heat death of the universe. Are we talking, like, 50 years, or 500, or...?
These kinds of details are usually handwaved away for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Whenever I need to reference computer speed of capacity in my books I use the perennial favorite, quad. (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad)
These kinds of details are usually handwaved away for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Whenever I need to reference computer speed of capacity in my books I use the perennial favorite, quad. (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad)
:D
I'm just trying to make the series more...grounded, I guess? Like, it takes place (mostly) on Earth, in this century.
But I still might make something up, like "18 petaQuOPS!" or something. It's not very important, only the numbers are.
This is something that's more important:
Last Question.
(:p @ Capella)
Ep. 0.01-0.05 (IOW, the miniseries) each take place on Earth, all on a single day -- each episode is a character piece designed to introduce one (or in one case, two) of the characters. The characters won't ever actually meet unless a series is ordered, and the central conflict of the series is revealed in bits and pieces, sort of like a thread that runs through the episodes, which are mainly focused on each character's own conflicts. This is so the miniseries can be sold as its own unit and not only a backdoor pilot. So.
If the best thing about writing sci-fi is obviously robots, the best thing about writing television is obviously musical montages. I've always wanted one, but they don't work so well in books. And so there's one at the very end of the miniseries, which sort of caps the whole thing and ties it all together, showing where all the characters are at one* moment, even though they're all over the place. So.
The moment in question is a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral. What I'm wondering is, on a clear night, how far away would a night launch (like the light trail -- the launchpad itself need not be visible) be visible from? I'm willing to be flexible with the geography of pretty much everything else to make the scene happen, so. Would it be visible from islands to the (little fuzzy here) south? I just want to know what I have to work with without breaking suspension of disbelief.
*) Technically, one character is on the other side of the world, and it's night where he is too, so his moment is technically ~12 hours later, made to look like the same moment through editing. ;) He doesn't need to see the rocket launch/light trail, of course.
:D
I'm just trying to make the series more...grounded, I guess? Like, it takes place (mostly) on Earth, in this century.
But I still might make something up, like "18 petaQuOPS!" or something. It's not very important, only the numbers are.
Oooh, I really like petaQuOPS. In fact, I'm taking it.
Oooh, I really like petaQuOPS. In fact, I'm taking it.
Feel free. :) Quantum OPS? Quad OPS? Works either way.
And, let's be real, nothing can sound sillier than FLOPS, anyway. :p
EDIT: Post 694666 :O
curiousuburb
2010-06-21, 07:12
The moment in question is a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral. What I'm wondering is, on a clear night, how far away would a night launch (like the light trail -- the launchpad itself need not be visible) be visible from? I'm willing to be flexible with the geography of pretty much everything else to make the scene happen, so. Would it be visible from islands to the (little fuzzy here) south? I just want to know what I have to work with without breaking suspension of disbelief.
*) Technically, one character is on the other side of the world, and it's night where he is too, so his moment is technically ~12 hours later, made to look like the same moment through editing. ;) He doesn't need to see the rocket launch/light trail, of course.
http://i.space.com/images/100402-shuttle-spotting-map-02.jpg (http://www.space.com/nightsky/how-to-see-twilight-shuttle-launch-100402.html)
Shuttle to ISS generally launches on this alignment... always away from population/over ocean (for safety as well as ease of orbital rendezvous), but in principle could be similarly Southerly.
Nighttime visibility of boosters would easily extend into Cuba even if launched on the track above... if launched hypothetical SE track instead, MECO might be visible as far away as Northern bits of S. America.
Launch (2 min timelapse) from 115 miles away looks like this ----v
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1002/launch_vernacotola900_s.jpg (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100213.html)
And that's Shuttle/SRB technology... something bigger might obviously be visible farther away.
As for your character on the other side of the world... launch itself wouldn't be visible, but reflection of sun off orbiting craft can be easily visible in dark sky locations. I've seen ISS/Shuttle dozens of times. Check Heavens-Above (http://heavens-above.com) and punch in your location for your chance.
For example... from Litchfield England (time lapse)
http://www.litchfield.com/skies/ISS-Endeavour_20080321.jpg
Perfect, that's exactly what I needed. Thank you so much!!! :) :) :)
Visible from Cuba is perfect. Perfect!
As for your character on the other side of the world... launch itself wouldn't be visible, but reflection of sun off orbiting craft can be easily visible. I've seen ISS/Shuttle a few times. Check Heavens-Above (http://heavens-above.com) for your chance.
That's what I was thinking, he'd see it ISS-style.
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