accurate sci-fi

I like the points this article raises.
http://io9.com/yes-it-matters-if-th...utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Surely the "fiction" in science fiction makes accuracy irrelavant?

It's at the behest of the audience member as to how far he/she treats something as believable, no?

That opening sentence...

I'm trying to find a polite way to say OF COURSE IT FUCKING MATTERS!

Then again, based on recent film releases, apparently it doesn't, at least on onscreen.

For my own work, I've made every effort to be as accurate as I know how and, where there are gaps in my knowledge, I tap the expertise of people I know who do these things professionally. I can't imagine basing a work on Making Shit Up. And I've been fortunate to have editors and fact-checkers to query anything that looks iffy.

You apply the same standards to s/f that you would to, say, crime fiction or period fiction or any genre that requires a specialized knowledge. Why wouldn't you in s/f? Readers will call you on the stupid stuff in other genres; they should here as well.

Now, there's wiggle room for speculation about technologies that don't yet exist...but even there your made-up technology has to be based on something feasible.

I think. Apparently I'm wrong. Apparently this is another area where "facts have a liberal bias" and are open to debate.

Everything in sci-fi needs a certain verisimilitude. The more advanced a technology is (transporters, tractor beams, etc.), the more vague its operation can be, but descriptions of its function should be connected with scientific concepts. It's enough to tell me that the warp drive works by using tremendous amounts of energy from a matter/anti-matter reaction to distort the fabric of space; you don't have to get much more detailed since it's increasing amounts of bullshit from there. After all, you aren't really inventing the technology, just describing it.

Bad science breaks the spell of any story based on science or technology. I groan every time I hear Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) completely mis-describe what an electromagnet is and how things are magnetized in Amazing Spider-Man 2 (absolutely nothing to do with holding an electric charge). I cringe when I hear Superman say that he used high school physics to figure out that, since Nuclear Man drew his powers from the sun, he'd be powerless in darkness (what high school teaches about nuclear-powered Kryptonian clones?). I roll my eyes when melting ice is somehow creates an oxygen atmosphere in Total Recall. (I suppose it could be frozen oxygen, but Mars isn't that cold; and if electrolysis of water is involved, there's a shitload of hydrogen that's gone unaccounted for.)

Sometimes, a film gets away with it. I never stopped to think about why the damaged space shuttle stopped spinning between the time Sandra Bullock was flung away from it and when she and Clooney return to it in Gravity until someone pointed it out...

Here's one.
The microwave gun that aerates water in "Batman Begins", ought to also boil the water in any human body it sweeps by, and splatter them like an overcooked eggwhite.

Not only that, but a civilization with a transporter doesn't need doctors. Just put the sick person in the pattern buffer, manipulate the genes causing the cancer or kill the virus causing the fever and Voilà! Cured.

Paladin's got it right - verisimilitude. Your science may be entirely invented (like transporters and warp drive), but the underpinnings have to be credible. Just saying "It's magic" is sloppy, IMO.

Don't get me started on transporters. they rightly ought to be able to bring back the dead.
Mike Okuda put some speedbumps in there to prevent that, but I've written long posts on my blog about how they can all be loopholed around.
And I'm just one nerd; in-universe, a transporter chief should have thought of it in a second.

it's been discussed before but a transporter in theory would be a fountain of youth. If you are scanned when you are young, you should be able to repeat that pattern 30 years later...or at least the same tech should lead in that direction. Indeed, if one could work out the distinction between the mental self and the physical self, one ought be able to remake one's body into any form that's been scanned (Janice Lester agrees!)

^Well, they did regenerate Dr. Pulaski from a few strands of hair...

If Pulaski had died, and they flushed her corpse into space, and then, they used her hair DNA to make an instant clone, and downloaded her neural pattern from either a medical scan, or a transporter trace....what difference would it make?

Cuz this procedure was actually already done.
"Search for Spock".
Except Classic trek's version leaves behind dead planets.
Otherwise, same thing.

TV Tropes has it covered:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

Hard sci-fi strives to be accurate in a scientific sense.

However, separating the mental and physical self -- or rather, separating the physical elements that create the mental self from the physical elements that don't -- is quite a tall order.

They did it like it was nothing in "our man Bashir".

not if you already have a device that SOMEHOW transmits the mental self across space unharmed. Hell, all they really have to do - at most - is reverse engineer Lester's device.

The cortical monitors from TNG/Voy are neural downloaders, they just won't admit it.
Just work it through.
The cortical monitor can mindmeld Chakotay into the Borg collective.
Tuvok mindmelded Janeway to Seven, and thus to Unimatrix Zero, and Borg Queen watched the dream on a screen.
Seven's Borg computers in the cargo bay interface with Voyager's computers.
The Doctor dowloaded Denara Pel.
The Doctor downloaded into Seven.

So, the meld can go Tuvok, to Seven, to Borg computer, to Voyager.
Or, cortical monitor, to Seven, to Borg computer, to Voyager (taking Tuvok out of the cycle).
And, if Pel can go to Voyager, and Doctor can go (from Voyager to emitter) to Seven, then Pel can go to Seven.
But, if Chakotay can link to Seven, then anyone with a cortical monitor can download to Seven without physical fibers in the brain like Pel or Seven.
And at that point, you can take Seven right out of it, and just go from cortical monitor to computer.
And if you can go from brain to computer, then downloading through subspace is nothing.
Wanna mix it with transporting?
Just wear a cortical monitor during beaming.

The problem with the Star Trek transporter is they explain it as a matter transmitter.

If they had explained it as a small scale projected warp field that people were sent through it would work better in the Trek universe.

I always said that if I was doing Star Trek in the future I would turn the transporter into something that worked that way.

I would explain that the old "matter transmitter" transporters were banned because they caused cancer (or something equivalent).

As brought up in this thread, the writers just didn't think of it, because the tech in the 60's had no equivalent comparison.

Roddenberry went with matter/energy teleportation, because "The Fly", "The Time Travelers", and a bunch of Twilight Zones used it.

And they used it because atomic power and TV were the new tech toys, and it wasn't much of a leap to think "well, what if you could atom smash and TeeVee a whole guy?".

ST was fine as long as it stayed vague about how the transporter actually worked. Roughly speaking, it was some kind of matter/energy conversion system that scanned a person, broke them down to their component subatomic particles, transmitted those particles to a target, and reassembled them remotely.

But the TNG episode "Realm of Fear" bollucksed things up good. Based on what happens in that episode, the transporter really CAN'T be a matter/energy conversion device, as the transported people remain conscious--and able to move!--throughout the process. That would've made Mr. Scott's 80 years in the transport buffer a living hell.

Maybe he had happy dreams of Orion slave girls.
Remember, Hoshi Sato tripped in a pattern buffer.