As a writer, when you write a story, there are elements of the story that you want your reader to feel real. What are the key lessons we can learn from science in science-fiction? Yes, there are a lot of fantasy writers and they write that might never be true. Like vampire stories or dragon stories. Nothing wrong with that writing.
Writing is all about where your curiosity takes you and finding the creativity in the unknown.
What is realism?
A fiction story tells a truth in hindsight. Only a writer knows that truth. Readers will read for entertainment or any other purpose, but they may or may not care about the truth. A writer cares about the truth. She will never say that it is the truth, but intuitively, she knows it is truth hidden somewhere. Realism is that brings reality to the story. When a reader reads the story, a reader can feel that this story can happen to anyone. Higher the chances of happening that story in real life, more the realism in that story. Science brings realism. And that’s one of the lessons of science in science-fiction.
Science in Science Fiction
That brings me to science in science fiction. Being a science fiction writer and a software engineer, it is even more important when I write about science in my stories, that science is accurate and informative. Writing science fiction stories is not writing about science more and less about stories. Finding the right balance between science and fiction is a writer’s job.
Other than finding the right proportion of science, the important element in stories is how to show scientific elements.
In my current work, I am dealing with AI and how futuristic AI will change our landscape. Our existence currently depends on algorithms and there will be an event when all these algorithms will become smart, very smart. They will even outsmart humans. Will singularity ever happen? That’s the question currently scientists are facing.
We follow google maps as it gives us directions to a location, we blindly follow those directions even if there might be possibly better options there. Humans are good at figuring out certain things, algorithms are not. There are a lot of dynamic factors when it comes to technology taking over, but it has already taken over. You start watching TV and you get suggestions about what you can watch.
So our current life is based on algorithms, we want to find a partner, we use dating apps. We want to socialize, we use social media apps. What product we should buy, most apps creep on you and show you the ads based on your conversation. In turn, we get lured to buy different things. Based on what we buy, we get recommended to buy more things. Algorithms drive our current life.
How futuristic life will be? How science fiction can depict life more accurately?
As part of my current novel, I am going to show more AI-based changes and how AI will affect our lives in the future. One thing I have learned from reading other authors’ books, is that showing certain science-based scenes are easy if they are emotionally charged. For example, if you are showing a woman giving birth, a fight scene involving laser guns. In these cases, you can describe the events in a way to show what’s happening, what your characters are feeling.
In the book Antifragile, Taleb argues why science fiction is usually not accurate. Considering we have this constant urge to predict things, science fiction acts as a forecaster. Most science fiction will tell you about science and technology that will be added in the future to your current life based on your current usage of technology. Most technology is not lindy. If anything you are adding via positiva that means it has replaced anything existing technology. Technology that lasts longer will be considered lindy, but the technology that will be added, has replaced some previous technology.
This brings me to the point that showing science in science fiction becomes even more important. The key lesson of science in science-fiction is that science is always contemporary, science-fiction is imaginary. Imagination paves the way for the progress of science.
If you don’t believe in magic, I feel sorry for you. Science is magic, science fiction is a way to bring that magic to reality.
Read my first post about my writing process.