Realism is not Better (But it is nice)
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- Опубликовано: 22 ноя 2022
- Spacedock delves into the recent trend of evangelizing realism in Science Fiction.
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In short: Dont be a gatekeeper to other people's entertainment. :P
@@ig33ku What does pluging the Sojourn have to do with gatekeeping?
I prefer realism over fantasy or hand-wavium, but at a certain point the story needs to take precedent and not how the thrusters work--to me, "internal consistency" is more important to a story than realism.
I prefer my sci-fi to have so much realism that its sci-non-fic.
To me the "realism" of a sci-fi franchise is far less of a problem, if the there's in-universe rules and reasoning established that are closely followed.
If in Starship Troopers the Terran Federation aren't bombing the bug infested planets with tungsten rods launched from maneuverable drone-satellites, while keeping the majority of the fleet at a safe distance.
Instead deciding to D-day the hell out of the surface of the planet, providing little to no actual close-in air support to troops on the ground, no artillery, no armored combat vehicles, instead they just try to use ww2 soviet human wave tactics against a swarm of giant insects resulting in a feast for the bugs.
I really, really want to know why it is done , and why it can't be done differently.
If a fictional universe stays consistent with it's own rules and they're established on some sort in-universe reasoning, I'm mostly alright with almost any level of "realism".
I think consistency is also a very important part of making a universe believable.
Consistency or verisimilitude is actually more important than realism. If realism is of prime importance, 99% of science fiction goes away, as pretty much any science fiction IP you can think of has unrealistic elements.
It's called science "fiction" for a reason.
@@autumngottlieb3071 Exactly.
Consistency is the measure between fiction and fantasy... and between good and bad fantasy after that:D
While realism is just a measure between soft and hard scifi.
The idea of consistency seems to have been thrown out entirely for spectacle. It drives me crazy. If a science-fiction material has numerous 'miracle' properties, that's fine so long as they don't keep adding to the list to fix the plot of the week. Stargate was pretty consistent with Naquadah. It's a room temperature superconductor, it increases explosive yield and it can be used to generate vast amounts of energy. It's fictional but it has limitations.
Star Wars has always been terrible about what the Force can and can't do and the limits. It's shown that projecting an image across the galaxy will kill a person... But pulling a 1600 metre long Star Destroyer out of orbit; you just need to sit down afterwards. Have a snack maybe.
The Harry Potter films were terrible with the 'rules' of magic so we see people casting without wands and casually pulling off feats we're told in the books aren't possible (Although the books often contradicted themselves).
Less said about Game of Thrones; the better.
I saw something recently that really resonated with me:
I don't need my fantasy to be realistic. I need my fantasy to be *convincing.*
and balanced. I hate fantasy that just invents gimmicks or special abilities to get the heroes out of bad writing.
@@SoloRenegade or in Warhammer’s case, find an excuse to destroy the world so GW can make a carbon copy of 40K
@@Freesorin837 Exactly how many exterminatus' do you want for emperor's sake?!!
A story may not get everything right, but yeah, in general it should be convincing. What we may refer to as plot holes, is what real life refers to fortune, randomness or happenstance. I'm no expert writer, but a general rule to carry any scene I write is to have it balance by unsavoury acts.
Example, a mercenary unit I wrote about gave the militia that reinforced them a significant advantage. That is, until the latter realise how disregarding the mercs can be when they drove over corpses to get to their fellow comrades faster. It's instances like thses spliced together with any number of different scenarios that help carry suspension of belief for the reader.
This goes for any genre. Get the facts write first and ALWAYS double check. The process of just creating a paragraph may take well over an hour but its worth every second if you know that it's solid and compact, irregardless of length. I'd say, there should be little quarter given to disregarding facts of any kind in writing.
@@jameslewis2635 YES .
I like to describe it as such: "Realism does NOT always mean realistic."
Authentic is good enough for me
What's wrong? Lack the original thought to construct your own ideology?
@@DrSoapp What?
@@DrSoapptechnically speaking, we all do.
MY big one is true to the genre/fans, a lot of stuff just looks dated after you watch the expense. IT's not just realism, if you make up silly ideas and no one else does them your product will just seem 2nd rate. @@owenbunny4023
Realism: There's no sound in space.
Reality: A space battle without sounds would be incredibly dull.
Done right it could be utterly terrifying though
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I actually really like how Mass Effect handled this. In short, all the sounds you hear when they are in space are computer generated for the crew to help with tactile awareness because humans are so reliant on our hearing.
I love Firefly's soundless space actions and found the sudden inclusion of sound in Serenity jarring.
@@hoojiwana in Gundam supplementary materials, there are pilots who, without permission, illegally adjust the sound settings so they can be less anxious or afraid in combat.
Workaround: Blah blah vibrations in the dark matter (if we aren't sure what it is yet, it can be anything! Remember all those stories of jungles on Venus?) interact with shields to make "sound"... which is also muffled and distorted for extra rule-of-cool.
And when the shields fail you hear "the silence of death" before you actually die. Crew who escaped the killing shot / rebooted the emitters in time tell tales of how they "survived the silence".
I think what mediums need more then realism is 'limitations'. The more you have limitations built into your narrative, it helps build tension cause the audience can understand the stakes better.
Indeed. Pseudo science has been a part of Sci-Fi forever. It just when you make rules to allow the fantastic, you need to follow and build upon them. When you don't your creation is left feeling "unrealistic".
Yes! I'm a hardcore Trekkie but the constant head cannon some fans feel they need to do is crazy. Hard limits remove "why don't they just do X to solve Y" debates when the real answer is because its all magic and there would be no tension if they actually used transporters to solve every problem.
@@EmperorOfMan Yeah most problems could be fixed with the transporter, and yet under utilized.
@@EmperorOfMan
Stargate got it right with transporters. The characters needed trackers for the technology to lock onto (first a bracelet and then an implant) and they didn't work through shields or jamming tech. They maintained this consistency throughout.
Star Trek meanwhile can never seen to decide whether they're scanning for com-badges or their life signs, they encounter multiple species that can beam through shields and they tout transporters as being completely safe despite them being the focus of multiple episodes dedicated to their malfunctions.
And that's not mentioning the new films and shows that throw out everything that's come before to have them do whatever they need them to do for this particular plot.
@@EmperorOfMan at some point this has to do with enjoying the series.
The Expanse was not great because it was Hard Sci-Fi, it was great because it had good writing, both in its plot and characters. A lot of people seem to not understand that no genre/sub-genre is superior to another, and it all hinges on whether the stories and characters are well-written
Yes, and the writers of the Expanse use the hard Sci fi world they built to directly impact the narrative time and time again. It isn't just a story that happens to be set in a hard Sci fi world, but rather the story is inextricably linked to the setting
Why does everything need to have one correct answer? It being hard scifi is definitely one of the main reasons it's great, if not the foremost one.
@@georgedang449 obviously that depends on each individual's taste, if people are drawn to it because of how realistic/grounded it is, far be it for me to invalidate that. However, my point mainly was that if the storytelling in The Expanse wasn't great, no amount of hardness in its science would make it quite as beloved as it is.
Expanse was best thing that graced the TV screen because it was both realistic and with a good writing. It had shown those naysayers who have been parroting the same "space, realism, interesting story, chose any two" BS for the last 30+ years.
100%, the realism was icing on the cake.
But not all scifi should, nor needs to, be realistic. sometimes the fun is seeing things we know couldn't otherwise exist in reality.
What I realy dig about the Expanse is that space feels like the hughe place it is, distance actually matters, and the travelling is an adventure by itself instead of just a thing that happens between plots. Then again 40k does this too while being absolutly bonkers
The Expanse shows the vastness of space with the tech they have so that stellar journeys take weeks or months. You get an Age of Sail vibe to it, especially with the depiction of space food and drink. I particularly liked the use of plants as air filters. You always get the vibe that resources are finite; food, water, power etc. Firefly was good for this too. You never get that feel in Star Trek with its replicators, which is why the premise of Voyager never worked despite their attempts to claim resources were rationed...
One of the issues with Stargate is that later on, they were able to travel between the Milky Way and the Pegasus Dwarf galaxy in just eighteen days. True, they're using a hyperdrive from a species tens of thousands of years technologically more advanced but it robbed the show of its own premise that the Stargates allowing this kind of easy travel was miraculous. It was easier for them to travel between galaxies in a ship than to power up the gates for inter-galactic travel. They go from using the gates and being awed by ships that can travel ten times or a hundred times the speed of light to ships that with the right power source can travel between galaxies in a matter of hours... It all felt too easy.
@Skylark
Guns were invented before the Age of Sail. A few hundred years earlier in fact.
Wasn't there an episode about sling-shotting through gravity wells that portrayed space as very much not being vast and empty?
@@insu_na
Alex was using the moons of Jupiter. Jupiter has eighty moons, possibly more and in space terms, they're all close together.
As Alex says 'That's a lot of moons.'
The reason The Expanse was so good: Great script, great cast, great direction and production. Unbeatable combo.
And realism.
The result of a group pf people who cared about their work and cared about telling a great story instead of propagandising their audience
@@richardhockey8442 😁 Snickering in space-anti-capitalism/anti-imperialism. 😁
@@richardhockey8442 Wait, I'm curious now. Never ever looked into The Expanse. Is that what it's about? 'Space anti-imperialism' as the other person said?
@@charlie7mason Well, there is an empire that forms later, which I garner is indeed the bad guy. So. Give or take.
I should also mention that when many people are talking about realism on sci fi, they only discuss physics, while biological, historical, societal and, in some cases, political realism are kind of put aside.
Out of curiosity, have you been watching Andor?
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Honestly I think we need a little less realism in that regard. It's basically "we have spaceships, but everything else is just as awful as it is today, if not worse". Why not stretch the imagination and imagine a society unrecognizable to today, with it's own set of problems? That's why I like "The Quantum Thief" series. It depicts a solar system long after the transhumanist revolution, and although life is radically different, it's still life.
Like how Expanse ignores existence of Luna or the fact that cybernetics appear to be on and off in setting at random? A guy with cybernetic eye is somehow a sneaky spy when such implants are widespread?
@@hoojiwana yes, and this is why I've said "in some cases"
YES! As a bio major, it always aggravates me when evolution and genetics are botched in these kind of shows.
Radiator panels definitely need to be used more, even in softer sci-fi. When they start glowing brighter, it means they're getting serious and have kicked the reactor up a notch to power something cool. It's like going super Saiyan but for spaceships.
Like Godzilla’s spikes glowing as he charges up a blast of atomic breath.
That depends on whether the setting is technologically sophisticated enough to turn waste heat into something useful, instead of just throwing it away. Ships in Gundam channel that heat into particle beam weapons. Ships in Battletech partially repurpose waste heat into thrust. Ships in The Culture flat out turns waste heat energy into any kind of power used in any kind of system onboard.
Or the radiators are fragile and limit ship maneuverability when extended. So a ship extending radiators cannot tactically maneuver, and is trying to dump heat before it cooks the crew. If a ship has extended radiators when in enemy weapons and continues to fire, the enemy can easily shoot off the radiators and that ship is now in much more trouble.
So on-screen you might see the cooling spikes of the engine starting to glow and you know that ship will do something impressive. But you also know that the ship doing this only has a short time period before the crew cooks.
Source = board game "Attack Vector: Tactical"
Even WAY back in Doc Smith's Skylark novels, shields were often said to be radiating in ever-higher frequencies before they finally blew out, as the ships frantically dumped waste heat into them.
@@georgedang449 Being able to channel waste heat into some practical purpose quickly and with 100% efficiency doesn't sound too feasible. Under optimal conditions, you might be able to pump the excess energy into a laser emitter, or thruster reaction mass, or some other useful gadget, but you don't plan exclusively for optimal conditions.
A ship designed for combat especially will be producing a lot of excess heat, and can't afford any delay in getting rid of it. This kind of heat repurposing equipment would presumably also take up more volume and mass, which is at a premium on a warship.
At best I can imagine such methods supplementing, but not replacing simpler ways of dumping waste heat in a more "realistic" setting.
There are a few different classes of realism in sci-fi. For example, you've got scientific realism, and you've got social realism. The Expanse demonstrates both of these really well, but a lot of my favorite sci-fi properties lean hard on the social realism, while handwaving a lot of the science, despite keeping a grounded tone. Battletech, for instance, is one of my favorite instances of this mindset.
@Cancer McAids The UN being absolute shit at running the planet seems pretty realistic to me.
@Cancer McAids Why? While I don’t think that in our timeline there will be a war with mars I think that the story made sense. Because It makes sense that Mars is more unified than earth just because they always had to work with each other in order to survive. The same goes for the belt and the different colonies. The way the see earth and mars, the way mars sees earth etc. I also like the fact that they really combined the environmental, scientific facts with the development of the culture.
I do like some reality in my story telling but I prefer "logical consistency". The beauty of the Expanse is that it takes hard sci-fi elements and uses them in the plot effectively. No inertial dampners, buckle up or be thrown against a bulk-head. No "artificial gravity" but don't go too fast or be turned into space-jam. No instant messaging, yer only getting a one-way video-gram. What the Expanse does is apply the rules of hard science evenly with just a pinch of "space-magic" to keep things interesting. And, of course, none of this would matter if the story were just crap. So, in the end, it's all "icing on the cake" for hard sci-fi enthusiasts.
I think consistency is a very important part when weighing realistic/unrealistic. It’s easier to accept the more fantastical elements of sci-fi when they make sense in universe and don’t wildly deviate from it
Like,Star Trek would be a whole lot less enjoyable if they pulled a nonsensical technobabble solution out once and never did it again. But since that happens all the time, it’s not that big of a deal in spite of being wildly unrealistic.
No, it's not! lol
The laws of physics and whatever other universal constants do not have to be the same as in our universe, as long as they are consistant within the IP's universe
@@kaylinhendrich4673 Star Trek is sitcom. Kinda like Futurama. When it takes itself too serious, like the Picard series, people get turned off.
agreed
I think series like Halo strike the perfect balance. Their designs and space combat are semi-realistic, but also fictional enough that that they have no problem bending the rules.
Totally agree. Halo is awesome.
The early books especially are a lot better with realism than I've ever really seen them given credit for. As far as the Nylund novels go, ten thousand kilometers is a close-ranged engagement. There's an actual flip-and-burn sequence at one point.
But in regards to your point: Yeah. Most of the Covenant ships look so beautiful to me that I don't mind how inefficient they are compared to grey bricks.
Mans speaking straight facts
Except for the size of MAC cannons.
I think it's most important for a show to establish it's own rules... Then follow them consistently.
Sadly, that rarely happens.
yes
Realism is nice as it adds an aspect of "this is what it could be like". That presents a vision that's within grasp and really excites the imagination
That's why I love The Expanse. The showing of what the future could be is my favourite sci-fi concept, and is what gives me inspiration to make stories.
I think Halo is a great example of how to male a series grounded and consistent, while still employing some good leeway for style and artistic license.
I think the key comes down to tonal consistency, and making sure you meet the design requirements/logical precepts, for what you set out to do.
Whining about his childhood really dragged the story down.
Two things I really find interesting about Halo are it's vehicle design, both military and civilian, and world design, specifically urban areas like New Mombasa, and New Phoenix, AZ.
I like The Expanse as well because of its attention to detail, and scientific accuracy. And the ships in The Expanse have a clear lineage of tech to our spacecraft, though are far more advanced, and actually are comparable to Halo in terms of propulsion, weaponry, and use of armor rather than shields. You could imagine spacecraft in The Expanse as a technological bridge between what our first space warships would be like, and Halo's ships. As far as spacecraft design goes, I prefer The Expanse, though I love the frigates from Halo.
Tech in Halo has varying levels of advancement depending on the environment, space travel, colonization and AI are the most advanced areas of technological advancement. Other areas have hardly advanced compared to todays tech, land vehicles still use wheels, and have engines that run on various fuels. The warthog is a decent example of this, or many of the civilian vehicles you see in mainly Halo 2, Halo 3: ODST on Earth.
Some colonies like New Alexandria on Reach were built to minimize vehicular traffic as much as possible, and rely on maglev trains, pedestrian areas, etc.
New Mombasa on Earth clearly has plenty of roads due to its roughly 650 years of development, built around both personal cars, and public transit, as well as being designed as a shipping hub due to having the first space elevator on Earth, and as a result of that space elevator the city grew exponentially, and has quite a number of tall buildings that dwarf the tallest buildings on Earth today.
Most if not all the cities in Halo are also ran by what are considered "dumb AI". Dumb AI despite their name surpass human intelligence in regards to what role they were designed for.
As for aircraft and spacecraft,
The Pelican for example might not fly in the real world using todays tech, but factoring in the advancement of aerospace tech 500 years into the future, and the miniaturization of fusion drives small enough to fit on aircraft, then it's really easy to imagine the pelican it flying in atmosphere using fusion thrusters. (though I think it has conventional jet engines that use fusion plasma to drive turbines, or use hydrogen as fuel when in atmosphere, with vectoring thrust capabilities)
Spacecraft design in Halo is great as well, depending on whether a ship or spacecraft is military or civilian also influences it's aesthetics. Military ships are generally more angular and blocky to give off a utilitarian design.
Civilian ships tend to be more rounded, as they are designed more for atmospheric flight and interplanetary, or interstellar travel, but some of which look like spacefaring airliners.
I imagine airliners for intercontinental transport in both The Expanse, and Halo would be similar to the Lapcat A2 and capable of Hypersonic speeds, which actually is what we should aim for instead of just supersonic transport.
Cargo ships vary greatly depending on the environment, and both Halo and the Expanse shipping relies heavily on containerization as we do today, but their containers are designed to be sealed for space travel.
Bulk freight ships likely exist as well, especially for mining colonies.
I am not so sure about the Expanse, but I would imagine it would be similar to an extent. Halo uses trucks, maglev trains, as well as ocean or laker ships for transport of goods on Earth, and the space elevators are the primary hubs of transporting goods to and from geostationary orbit, and the planets and star systems beyond Earth.
Imo, any good fiction is internally consistent. Whether this is the science of the setting, or a magic system or whatever, having a consistent universe allows characters to be more believable and more "real."
That's one of the great things about Brandon Sanderson's fantasy series.
I think what's more important than realism is internal consistency. The most important thing is that a setting doesn't break the rules its previously established, at least without providing a reasonable explanation for why it's possible. _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ has a ton of ridiculous stuff going on, but it never breaks its own rules, so the audience never gets its sense of it being a "real" world broken. _Back to the Future_ is the same way, once they establish how time travel works, they stick with it for the rest of the films.
"Let people enjoy things, whether you do or not." I wish more people did this.
I dont think you do... everybody agreeing gets pretty boring pretty quick... also there are some really f'd up things that can happen if you go too far with the live and let live
Verisimilitude is extremely important. Realism isn’t.
The most important thing is Internal consistency.
Its fine for a setting to have nonsense stuff in it but its have to follow its own rules.
Thats why W40k was awsome, its has magic, demons and other crazy stuff but it follow its own rules pretty nicely.
came here for this comment. I love hard sci-fi, I love science fantasy. as long as the setting is internally consistent, I can lose myself in it and fall in love with it. as soon as it stops playing by its own rules, I am pulled out of it
Yes 40k has magic and demons and gods, yet a majority of the human tech that is ubiquitous in the setting is based off of real concepts, promethium, which is a petroleum replacement, is a real mineral, it's spent nuclear fuel that's been powdered and is an extremely unstable compound, and thus, combustible. Or Melta-weapons, based off of German tech from WWII designed to be hand-held anti-tank weapons that could do more then a panzerfaust by basically being a multi-use HEAT round.
I dunno, 40k has more than its fair share of lore contradictions. Most sci-fi franchises of a certain size do, for that matter.
@@justinthompson6364 Unavoidable when there are many different writers (hard to avoid with even one writer).
@@justinthompson6364 i have this headcanon that if there's any inconsistencies in the lore of 40k it's because of the centuries old administratus and stories getting lost and distorted over time. Or it is an embellishment by holy terra to make themselves sound more grand
Really wish the Lost Fleet Series would get wider recognition in the larger Sci-Fi community since John has done a good job of trying to build realistic elements into the books.
I love the Lost Fleet books. I actually read the entire series multiple times. They are a ton of fun. And I just looked it up and there's 2 new books since I last read any of them! Goody! :) In the same vein if you haven't yet, try the Expeditionary Force books.
Also loved John's pillars of reality books. Which ironically delivers on the science fantasy I was hoping I would get from David Webbers Safehold series. Personally I feel Safehold got kind of boring after a few books, but definitely give it a try if you like idea of a science fantasy story based around the age of sail.
David Weber's other better known Honorverse series is also really cool:) For anyone who doesn't know, it's essentially real physics plus the ability to manipulate gravity in lots of cool well thought out ways. It also is really cool in that the books cover a period of rapid technological advancement, and so all the space battles keep changing:)
The Lost Fleet is so underappreciated that I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen anyone else mention it in Spacedock's comment section
I've read the Lost Fleet series multiple times too. wish it could get made into a TV series, written/made by people who appreciate the series and scifi in general.
@@SoloRenegade So, not Disney, Amazon, Netflix, or Hollywood, right? 😁 =^x^=
Man I genuinely needed this video, as a military science fiction author the discourse surrounding the expanse’s “hard science fiction" has been scaring the ghost out of me
Make the tech within your stories consistent, and that will help a lot. For example if you have an engine that lets you go from planet to planet but it takes a month or two, don't have a second ship catch up easily. Or if it does, then the second ship has a new engine, with all sorts of fun problems you can talk about.
You could make it where the troops have to use a variety of weapons based on the environment, and a change in the environment makes the current weapons much less effective. For example you might have a platoon using laser weapons on a vacuum planet, and recharge from their nuclear-powered Dropship. Then something happens to their Dropship and the troops only have as much ammo as they had charged up. This will radically change their tactical operations since they no longer have free reloads. Or an enemy fires a silica grenade filling the air with refractive prisms. Now the laser weapons are much less effective, but the rebels with their AK-207s have no problem. Or the reverse where the troops attack during a heat wave inhibiting the enemy laser weapons, and their assault rifles are good. The problem is that the assault rifles have to carry physical ammo powered by chemical explosions imposing an ammo limit, while laser weapons might be linked to giant batteries and have unlimited ammo.
You likely have all sorts of experience with military equipment, and can translate that to a military sci-fi story. One idea might be small nuclear reactors whose purpose is to extract oxygen and nitrogen from the air and make ammonia fuel for the rest of the armored force. How happy would the Quartermasters be with a tank force that is truly independent from fuel needs? You might have a book that tells you that 1 Milk Cow vehicle can support 40 tanks on the road, 20 tanks cross-country, or 10 tanks on the attack, so your readers know that in combat the fuel supplies will be used up faster. An enemy hitting the fuel tanker (not the nuclear vehicle) means you can't save up fuel for a deep strike.
Plus infantry using the ammonia fuel to clean their gear, resulting in lower fuel supplies before an inspection.
I wouldn't worry too much. All future set sci-fi is speculation. If you set a story hundreds of years in the future using only what we know is currently possible that would be in itself unrealistic, as our understanding of physics, material science etc. is always changing. (writing about a material with the properties of graphene would've been considered soft sci-fi not so long ago)
Another example. Star trek used plenty of unexplainium in warp tech, making it soft. Since then we have Alcubierre's equations, moving its position on the soft to hard scale, though not all the way as its still only theoretical.
I agree that consistency is important as it helps the reader understand the universe you've built but more important is developing your story and characters.
Good luck!
@@elliothawthorn9681 Oh I'm not too worried about how the discourse affects my works, I've made what I thought was a good story and wasn't chased away with a stick by others my worry more just comes from, if I had started with this grating fear that I have to make it "Realistic" otherwise its not good sci-fi I don't think I ever would have stepped out to try my hand at writing and I just worry for how many people fit that mould and feel like that.
Good point. As the video said, too many people are presenting their personal preference as absolute. It must be hard for a writer to block that out and not second guess himself. I suppose the old saying 'if you try and please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no-one' applies.
I would recommend reading the Imperial Radch trilogy for a good contrast. It never goes into artificial gravity, barely touch on the FTL technology, weapons are vaguely described as "guns".
The AIs, the politics, the Radch culture and the general intrigue are however described in depth.
How large is a Justice class ship, how many weapons does it carry? Irrelevant. It is an enormous troop transport with a millennia old AI core, that is what we need to know.
It is a soft sci-fi, but it has more realism than most fiction I have read. The characters, the culture, the AIs, the ships are really well written. Hell, it has better aliens than the Expanse's Gatebuilders.
The part about the audience always asking for more science really resonated with me. I've been workshopping my own sci-fi for years, obsessing over the hard details in preparation of that very thing. I ENJOY it, the puzzle of figuring out a real way for the fantastic to happen, but it can be crippling and enslaving! I will never figure out a realistic FTL, because if I did I'd be the real life Zefram Cochrane, and it actually took a while to forgive myself for that and just enjoy the ride.
Ironically, only once I relaxed did my ideas start to truly click together for the first time.
I often find the use of softer sci-fi necessary to keep the plot going.
For one of my own settings, I decided that all my ships would rely on a reactionless and inertialess drive. Obviously this is not realistic, but by making them reactionless, I can avoid doing calculations for delta-v. And my making it inertialess, I can sidestep issues with inerta dampening and time dilation.
And I justify it in setting, by making part of the FTL drive. (Just down shifted to sub light speeds.)
@@erikschaal4124 that's not a terrible idea for that setting. Isaac Arthur had an episode, which briefly touched on that very idea. And there is actually a concept around low-gear-FTL called the Bias Drive that you might find useful.
the thing about so called "realistic" sci fi its still fiction and the "realistic" aspects are still based on a bunch of theories and concepts. what is more Important is that it should make sense within the scifi stting itself.
What I like about about the expanse is the vertically built spacecraft, like the old tail sitters rockets in artwork that pre-date Star Trek. In the setting (which has reactionless drives, FTL, and inertia dampeners) its a rule of thumb that ships are built in the vertically in the "skyscraper" orientation mainly out of the safety concerns of the inertia dampeners being damaged whether it be by combat or it simply be faulty. Better that if the inertia dampeners fails that the control panel is still only a foot or so away than have the dampeners fail and the back wall of the room becomes the new floor and the control panel is 20 feet out of reach.
I think hard sci fi works best for stories about civilization just setting foot in space, but the more advanced the softer you can go, as long as the core rules you set down still apply.
I feel old now as Babylon 5 was my first introduction to hard sci-fi. Compared to Star Trek, the rotating ship sections and how the Starfiury's moved was revolutionary.
Indeed. I loved the Starfuries. How they used RCS, inertia, etc. They didn't fly like airplanes like most spacecraft in Sci-Fi.
Outside of Newtype shenanigans, mainline Gundam is about as hard sci-fi you can get with a genre based around giant robots. While Minovsky particles are completely fictional, their properties and use are internally consistent.
Loving the recent Gundam shout outs and references. Gundam really is quite hard in terms of many background elements such as colonization of the earth sphere and limited forays into the rest of the solar system, simulated gravy by rotation, et cetera.
Really the only realism issue i have with gundam is the use of humanoid warcraft. lol
The irony is in a zero G environment a vehicle/capsule with 4 robot arms would make a lot of sense. Think 4 Canada arms. It's just the way gundam does it is absurd. @@molochi
There was another really good show in the 90's that had some realistic elements and gets zero recognition now. "Space Above and Beyond" was a fantastic show. Definitely had 90's vibes but was way to short lived.
yeah, it was great . i still have plastic model of SA-43 on the shelf. one of my fav space fighter crafts (next to stargate F-302/puddle jumper, colonial viper (of all variations) and nearly all citadel races spacecrafts from mass effect saga) .
I read the first 10 or so words and knew exactly what show you were about to mention... AND I 100% AGREE!!!
I loved this show when it was on and was disappointed it only got 1 season. Makes it a quick rewatch though... I need to find it on DVD.
A true unfinished gem. Put it right next to Earth 2.
Hm, the "realism" was very muted, though.
SPAAB most underrated show ever. FYI BSG just ripped it off continuously, including the strong female hot shot pilot. Even the part of defending a bad presidential candidate.
Gundam used to be fairly grounded (it has never been realistic) but since the latter half of Unicorn it might as well have become a super hero franchise. Hopefully Hathaway's Flash continues to bring thigs back down to earth so to speak.
I always prefer to use the term "grounded" rather than "realistic" when refering to mechs since Big combat legged plataforms doesn't exist but saying "grounded" is like saying "this doesn't exist but we will tweak things to make it look like it could work at some degree" , besides that way you get off the annoying twats that say "no mech is "realistic" , killing two birds with one stone
What the heck are you on about, have you just watched solely just the 3 UC OVAs? We have G-Gundam which is quite literally a Super Robot Brawl Anime and Wing Gundam with all the Gundams easily mowing down hordes of Leos, and it was finally Unicorn Gundam that made you decide that Gundam is a Super Hero Franchise?
Even if its just exclusively UC Gundam, we had Kamille channeling the power of the dead to kill Scirocco and Amuro using his Newtype Powers to push Axis from Earth.
@@dooggo-1402 I was only including UC, there is a big difference between Kamilles final desperate attack or axis flash requiring two armies and the sacrifice of two incredibly power newtypes and the straight up god powers that Unicorn exhibits, it sends the MS reactors back in time for gods sake. Yes G Gundam is a Super Robot show it was made to cash in on Dragonball Zs popularity, Wing is not because the Gundams are still treated as war machines all be it very tough ones, I dont really consider Unicorn to be an actual super robot show either (note the use of the phrase "might as well have") as for the most part the unicorns are treated as high performance Mobile Suits. My big problem it was the culmination of Newtypes changing from people with the ability to instantly understand each other with some psychic abilities that can pull of incredible feats when pushed to the absolute limit but with tragic consequences to outright magical beings that again send things back in time or in Narrative become Mobile Suit piloting ghosts and whatever BS that terrible villain I can never remember the name of is doing at the end of that awful movie. I believe I have explained what the hell I was on about and I apologise for how overly simplistic and vague my initial comment was.
I greatly appreciate the video about hard sci-fi with the menu music from Gundam Evolution playing in the background.
But in all seriousness I'm glad you bring this up because it feels very gate-keepy how some people talk about hard sci-fi being better, like there's this implication that only intellectual people will appreciate it. Great video as always, keep it up
One setting I'm working actually takes radiators into account; the giant mecha that can transform from robot to fighters all have wings, now this is standard for the trope, but in my setting there is more of a reason then 'they just look cool.' In universe the wings serve a dual purpose; they both provide some lift in the atmosphere and act as radiators. This is even a plot point during the second major era of the setting as a race of aliens see the MC's mech flying around with these heat sink wings, leaving trails of steam in it's wake and recall their myths about the an invincible hero to killed the evil gods who had red wings and flew on clouds.
Look, it's a good idea, but a lot of the ideas I hear on RUclips sound like they're smarter than they really are
You're definitely right, the believability is more important than anything. TheExpanse gives everyone a very accessible way to appreciate those "hard" details like retrograde burns and G-forces seen in space, but it's not necessarily required. If a different show doesn't depict those things, yeah technically it's "less realistic" but it's not automatically worse unless that particular element plays a role in the writing. Expanse was able to really put those elements front and center, which is super cool and relatively unique, but we can still come together and enjoy 60 years of scifi even without those features. I suspect an episode's time limit places more constraints on the writing than we can immediately see.
I must say that as a science-fiction writer I am extremely grateful for this video. My stories are admittedly soft on the science and I've been feeling greatly discouraged by this feeling out there that hardcore science is a requirement for the genre. As an individual, there is only so much time I have to dedicate to creating and developing a story, and personally I prefer to spend the majority of that time on the plot, world, and characters rather than researching scientific papers to have accurate physics, technologies, etc.
That being said, realism is important to me, but I find myself placing that importance on the characters and the world. Is an event believable? Do people react to it like they would if something like it happened in real life? Are the characters motivations and actions true to life? Etc.
Realism doesn't only apply to the sciences behind physics and technology, but also to those of psychology and civilization building.
I do have to thank you for the series on Hard Sci-Fi concepts as I am writing my own Sci-Fi story that leans hard and I ended up including several things that I learned from those videos. Such as I previously didn't have radiators on my ships or LASER PDWs but ended up putting them on later, and I used Nuclear Shaped charges for Nuclear ASW weapons as well, instead of just conventional nuclear warheads. So yeah, thank you for these videos, they've done a lot of research for me.
But it can beat Warhammer 40K? XD
It took a second for me to read "LASER Point Defense Weapons" instead of "Personal Defense Weapons".
The thought of someone justifying the existence of LASER Personal Defense Weapons makes me afraid
@@Ranade_Empor Laser Personal Defense: Burn a hole in your assailant AND your retinas!
@@DecidedlyNinja "See that thug over there?"
'Yes, sir.'
"I don't want to, anymore."
'Understood, si- AAAAAAAAAAAAMYEYES!'
@RommDan news flash: having a sci fi that can't survive a cross over war with 40k doesn't make your sci fi bad
Self-consistency and grounded is often more important than "realism". Don't get me wrong, I love the things that are on the harder end of the Mohs scale of science fiction hardness (The Expanse and Mass Effect). Edit: Even then, having less grounded tales is ok too if it fits the story and scale.
I love Mass Effect, and am definitely interested in The Expanse. Not sure when I'll get around to it but looking forward to it for sure.
The Martian is highly realistic in terms of biology and physics and is a great story. Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels are realistic with regard to sociology and politics, but do a lot of handwaving in other sciences and are great stories. Frankenstein was realistic according to what was understood about living structures at the time of its writing, though we know a lot more and a lot better today, and remains a great story.
A great story pulls readers or viewers in to its world and makes us identify with its characters. The degree of realism that the author uses is one technique for achieving that, but it's not the only one.
Part of it is certainly that some people are conflating novelty with quality and for them The Expanse was their first experience of harder sci-fi than what's usually seen in pop culture. But I also think that there's an appreciation of The Expanse being self-consistent which is being conflated with an appreciation of realism. Too often, sci-fi writers just write with the mentality that anything goes, abusing the Clarke quote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Star Trek writers infamously would often put "TECH TECH" into the script without any consideration of how it'd actually work, and someone else would fill in the technobabble later. Realism forces a degree of consistency because the rules are set.
The writers of The Expanse have described it as soft sci-fi wearing a hard sci-fi shell. The fantastic technology is made all the more fantastic because of the contrast with the more mundane technology used by the humans in the setting. But even there, they freely admit that several concessions were made for the sake of the story, like how the Epstein Drive runs on "efficiency". However, even with the fantastic technology they set rules and followed them.
Take space battles. In The Expanse, different weapons systems like missiles, PDCs, and railguns all have well-defined roles with strengths and weaknesses and battles play out logically based on rules set by real world physics. In Star Trek, phasers and torpedoes are used pretty much interchangeably and most battles are little better than a drunken brawl because they never established any rules and thus have no rules to follow. It's only gotten worse with fleet engagements because instead of two drunken brawlers in an unorganized fracas, it's two dozen. The fundamental problem isn't that soft sci-fi isn't realistic, it's that too often it doesn't have any rules and even if it does, too often it fails to follow them.
I just finished the Expanse, and wanted to know what other hard sci-fi shows are there within the last 5 years. I saw the foundation recently and that is an excellent show for its atmosphere and drama.
Well it's less tv shows and more other media. There's videogames like ΔV: Rings of Saturn and Children of a Dead Earth, and in terms of literature theres decades of content to draw upon.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Away on Netflix. It's near future depicting a crew going on the first trip to Mars and I thought it was pretty good.
Murdoch Mysteries-- anachronistic tech is involved in 1800s mysteries. Explanations of logic and math are common. Hard Scifi need not be in space....pewpew
@@viscifi517 Agreed! it starts in the 1890s and carries on. right when we were just starting to learn all sorts of things. I love it when they invent modern stuff to solve a case like its new. (a primitive version of photoshop to 'prove' a guy was at a place because they had a picture)
Not a TV show but the books written by Kim Stanley Robinson are excellent examples of hard sci-fi (the Mars Trilogy is one of my favourite book series).
If you've played the Terraforming Mars board game, it takes a lot of its inspiration from the Mars Trilogy.
I think realism is a storytelling tool for communicating immersion and dramatic tension. That's not the only way to create those two things. I think a lot of film and TV fail to communicate how I'm supposed to feel in a given situation,its usually portrayed in the most basic way without enough clear reaction shots from the characters to show their inner state. If someone or something is powerful and dangerous , we need to visually and emotionally establish that contrast beforehand, during, and after.
That way it can be the new rule of cool.
Look up " leopards frequently spotted on high mountains in western " on yT.
Elusive....
A sci fi story I'm reading (The Last Angel by Proximal Flame)
The most unrealistic parts are the naiads and subspace/slipspace(the ftl method) and shields
Other than that, everything has basis in real physics and logic, this means despite one side being much more technologically advanced, she is still limited by physics
This means when certain things happen, the stakes are higher, making the story more tense.
It is also very consistent, nemesis is limited by the same rules as almost everyone else
My favourite 'hard scifi' is Rondevou with Rama. It was just such an interesting book. And its funny that Gundam actually does bring up heat dissapitation. Some of the Zeon robots had too big nuclear reactors and so they overheated on land, so that's why they are amphibious (the designs are wack though lol).
The good thing about realism is it sets very plausible ground rules. If I have an unidentified weapon, I can't really imagine how it does stuff and questions like "why don'tthey do this?" can arrive and also consistency is harder. The more realism you got, the more of a ground skeleton you have for your world. I understand that a gun shoots, and that it can destroy a target. I also know that there are limitations to guns and I know how they look like, so I won't question them in any way
As a sci-fi creator working on a hard-ish sci-fi, this very problem has been absolutely exhausting to have to deal with. It is to the point where I genuinely don't want to interact with the "hard sci-fi" crowd just for my own peace of mind. Because you're right, no matter how realistic we made our setting, someone always bemoaned the concept because it didn't meet their arbitrary standards of realism. It's made garnering traction over our game and setting difficult, and having spoken with a lot of other creators, this is a near-universal issue. Then these same people complain that there's no new hard sci-fi content.
What kind of game? Video or tabletop/pen and paper? I've been hunting for a scifi tabletop/pen and paper game for years
Specially true when it comes to things that only exist at small scale , like no matter how grounded you may make a mech you Will always have that one mf that is like "there is no such thing as a realistic mech" and i'm pretty sure that Will be the case even if we do make some Big combat mech irl
Speaking of Gundam. The new Witch From Mercury is OUTSTANDING! And is a great way to get (back) into Gundam since it is not connected to the wider Gundam timeline (which can be a lot since there is over 40 years of Gundam history).
Most gundam stuff is stand alone. Wing, Iron blood orphans. Seed. No need to watch anything else. Just start with episode one. Even some uc stuff like Victory can be watched as a stand alone. So this was a thing before witch ever came out.
Really well put. As a huge fan of both Andor and The Expanse (literally two of my most favorite shows ever), I've struggled to say essentially the same thing you are here to folks negatively comparing the former to the latter.
The one thing that gets me is plot hole physics, when the stories need them. That includes the stories and franchises I like.
As someone as already mentioned, consistency is the key.
It's especially frustrating because you wouldn't be able to get away with such a thing in a contemporary show. You can't have a car chase start in New York and end a few minutes later in Paris, for example.
@@RocketToTheMoose Well, actually, you probably could. You could turn a mundane story on earth into some reality-warping sci-fi thriller/mystery where suddenly in the middle of a car chase, some random people are spatially displaced for some mysterious reason. Perhaps you could turn it into a story about simulation theory, or any number of things. It's all about the execution and consistency of its elements.
Of course, I know it's a figure of speech, but honestly, you could do something interesting with just that as a plot hook.
@@TheHazelnoot I mean sure, but I meant in the sense of a contemporary non-SF show.
Do like a bit of Newtonian physics in movement (for me the best balance between hard and soft movement was BSG). Only issue I have with the Orville is seeing such large CGI models move like fighter jets just "feels" weird, weightless.
Yeah, big ships don't move like that in such fast speeds.
Breaking from physics as we understand it is fine since we have to assume there will be advances in propulsion and technology. I'm fine with fantasy elements in Sci-Fi as long as the story explains the rules in which the universe works, the rules are understandable, and the story sticks to them.
The Expanse's Epstein Drive never seems that fantastical because I find it does for space travel what the jet engine did for air travel. Before jets, the fastest prop aircraft could only manage 500mph (record is 574 I think). The fastest jets can do 2,000 mph.
And when you consider how little time passed between the first powered flight and the development of jet aircraft, it's not that much of a stretch.
I always enjoyed Stargate for being consistent with various techs. Transporters need something to lock onto so personnel are given tracking implants. They don't work through shields and jamming tech can be used to stop them. They also have a maximum range. They also make the point that craft are equipped with 'inertial dampeners' and that without them, they would be paste. Shepard even uses this at one point in Atlantis to his advantage. Star Trek was pretty consistent with this during the 80s/90s but since the Abrams films, tech does whatever the plot needs it do.
And they can't seem to decide whether they use Warp drive that allows them to travel faster than light in real space, or whether it puts the ship into subspace/hyperspace.
@@DomWeasel thank you for taking the time to write that out.
That was very well-put, and I really don't have anything to add to it 👍.
As an enjoyer of everything from hard sci-fi to sci-fantasy, I love this video
I think it really does not matter if the seting is hard- or soft- -scifi(-fantasy; -whatever), usually what matters is consistency with pre estabilished rules,
many people say they want more realism, because realistic is usually about not bending rules, but using them in clever way, (and yes any story should be about that, but usually those which are more realistic have less out of butt solutions)
sry for bad english
The english is fine the LITERAL!!! only word that was wrong was "whitch"
it's which* btw
@@florntlaze810 thx for spell check
What is a bit funny with how you talk about Gundam not being a hard scifi is how Gundam is the originator of the "Real Robot" genre in anime. Of course, the standard for realism has changed since the late 70s.
I'd also add this sort of thinking has gotten into Fantasy with people saying Hard Magic systems are better than Soft ones.
There's a part at the end of this video where you said "that's why I made those other videos, to inspire other creators."
I wanted to say I love spacedock and all your content. It's been a constant inspiration for me while working on my space combat TTRPG, Assault Fleet Centauri.
Everytime I watch one of your videos I end up diving back into the mastership list and changing something. Like earlier this week earlier this week adding extendable centrifuge pods to a hospital ship, and putting drive cones on the front of my Cruiser designs.
I've just started listening to the Sojourn too, and I'm loving it.
So thank you for making amazing videos.
The way I talk about realism with game design students and when working on game or other fictional projects, is that realism should be a source of inspiration rather than a constraint.
Sometimes realism is really interesting, and you can find some great ideas when wondering how the physics affect various parts of your story.
In my Lancer campaigns, I spend *a lot* of time thinking about how people grow food and keep their air and water clean in space stations. The reason I do this, is because it inevitably leads to engaging titbits about the culture and vibes of each station depending on their resources and access to planetary goods.
On the other hand, Lancer is a mech TTRPG, and mechs make absolutely no sense in any military doctrine. We gleefully handwave away all of the physics and engineering because mechs are cool and the players want to fly around and have big robot sword fights in space.
Basically, if following realism leads you to a better story, follow it, but otherwise, just have fun. Realism is a tool, use it when it helps, but there are plenty other tools in the box.
Other fun examples of Scifi that balance consistency, realism, story, etc. are Halo, BSG, The Lost Fleet, Honor Harrington, Foundation, Ark Royal, Rendezvous with Rama, and many more.
If a story is well written, has good characters, is consistent within its universe/physics/technology/etc. and tells an interesting story, it is good scifi. A touch of realism is always nice to see, but it's ok to deviate from reality to explore concepts and ideas that can't otherwise happen in reality.
I think the thing I enjoy about the expanse over other shows is because it feels like it uses space and sci phi as a character rather then a setting.
Please bring it back, I want to see the laconian-sol conflict.
My favorite setting, which I think does a decent job of mixing realism and sci-fan, is Battletech. It also has an incredibly extensive history and background to the setting, which I encourage everyone not familiar with it to check out. EDIT: It gets *way* more science-fantasy with the arrival of the Clans in 3049, and perhaps even worse during the Word of Blake Jihad in the mid 3060s, but prior to that, and post-Jihad, it gets back to the 'nitty-gritty'
For those of you bringing up radiators and dealing with excess heat and such, hey look at that, thats a thing in battletech. Mechs, aerofighters, and spacecraft all need to mount heat sinks to deal with heat, and if they dont they can shut down, or worse.
Its probably more hand-wavey than *real life*, but its more than most settings, in that regard ;)
_LOVE_ Gundam. It was over 10 years late with the US release and I have only been into it for a few years. Gundams actually make sense if you lived in the outer planets. They are humanoid spaceships with the loadout of a naval vessel. They can mine and do all sorts of construction jobs. Basically a very high utility vehicle.
eh~ even within the series that gets challenged
every other show has some huge biblically accurate mech throne that is an order of magnitude stronger than any of the mobile suits
civilian mobile suits and related tech helps make it more believeable, but honestly its more the fact that everyone uses mobile suits and they are an accepted convetional weapon in the setting that sells it
same reason nobody questions replicators in star trek, its not the technobable its the framing
I enjoyed The Expanse in part due to the realistic’ish flight mechanics. But it’s the story that keeps me watching the entire series over and over and over again.
And Amos. Can’t forget Amos. 🤘🤘
I appreciate a world that is internally consistent rather than more “real”
Battlestar Galactica *2003*
Had the perfect blend of Realism and Sci-fi
I am a Simple man: when i see a MCRN Ship i click it
I appreciate you saying that. Honestly fans of something can ruin it for other people. You see it a lot more than one would think.
Totally agree. There might be some argument to be had that it's more technically impressive to do good hard sci fi because it's more constrained, but hardness does not translate to quality. The most important thing is that it sticks to its own rules, whether they be similar to known physics or not.
Realism is good for a show where it thematically fits imo. Your world is the canvas your story is painted on, it should be designed to accommodate it as best as possible.
Yeah, even in UC Gundam, the M-Particles can be forgiven since it doesn't do that big a deal. Newtypes with the psycho waves and associated tech is when UC went pretty super robot. Wing is the most realistic Gundam setting.
This was awesome, thank you. Sometimes these things need to be said, and we need to be reminded of who we are and what we love.
Also, I get so pumped seeing that Leonidas fight where Rocinante protected the Razorback. I'd love to hear more about how that unique fight took full advantage of the tactical opportunities the setting provides, such as the physics of the ships movement and sensor mechanics. It was so good.
Will admit that this channel did influence my own sci-fi world by giving my main ship, the deep space explorer "Ever Distant Horizon" big honking radiators since A) she not just a crew and massive power plants to pull hear from but also foundries and manufacturing onboard, and B) a shorthand that despite her armaments she is an explorer due to having such an obvious weakness.
Plus having six massive radiators being raked back looks really cool.
Definitely raised some good points. Most of my experience with harder sci-fi tend to come from tbr space operas like the Honorverse.
6:12 that was me with the expanse whenever there's a scene with magboots lol. They still walk around like they're under 1G of pull with their arm and leg movements. I totally get why they do it though, just filming in a regular room and adding the sound effect to let you know they're in 0G is a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to make them walk all floaty as if they're actually just stuck and clinging on for dear life
While the Expanse was good for having more basis in Physics, they certainly weren't the first to do so. The second generation of Battlestar Galactica had more realistic space battles; but really - Babylon 5 was the show that really brought physics to SciFi.
I don't care how impractical or unrealistic it may be, I love starfighters and dogfights in space!
For me, mecha action.
Surprised no BSG mention as that covers both hard and soft sci-fi quite well and is well written (for the most part)
Gundam is a wonderful take on scifi, it needs more attention.
For me; internal consistency is monumentally more important.
But it is not, look at the most successful fiction IPs, they have a lot of consistency problems
@@rommdan2716 "For me"
Would love to see you make a video on the Minovsky Particle from the UC Gundam series. It's a fictional particle waste produced by the Minovsky Reactor that's got applied into weaponry and defence.
I second this suggestion. The Universal Century is (usually) a fairly hard science fiction setting.
Yea, I would love to see it as well.
What I especially like about it is that it is actually used to properly explain just how and why things such as energy barriers work with the I-Fields in this setting when most other sci-fi settings say it is an energy barrier and leave it at that.
The particle is also remarkably flexible despite being under some strict rules, eventually leading to things such as the Minovsky Drive System.
I've been a Sci-Fi fan for over 40 years, and in that time I've loved shows and movies that run the gamut of the genre. Stargate, Farscape, Red Dwarf, Star Trek Lower Decks, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Ghost in the Shell SAC, Star Wars Rebels, I love 'em all. But I will say that in all those years, the thing that left the biggest impact on me was the first time I saw a Babylon 5 Starfury in combat. Also, I don't know what makes me think of it now, but for some reason this little scene keeps popping up in my head, it's from an old interview I watched:
Question "How fast do ships travel in Hyperspace?"
Answer "At the speed of plot." - J. Michael Straczynski
recently been checking out your channel, i love how you have a focus on facts but balance it with the intent of storytelling and that the facts serve the story more than the story is a vehicle to show off technical knowledge. thanks for the great content!
All the poor people who would skip Stargate or the Librarians because it's not hard sci-fi saddens me. Two movies that are really hard sci-fi and don't get enough attention now are Gravity and The Martian.
The Martian is both an awesome movie and book.
I’m excited for the “To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars” movie adaptation. Amazing book. Has a good bit of realism, but also has aliens and such, but does keep them mostly believable.
I haven't watched the video, but I assume the most important things are internal consistency and acceptable breaks from reality. One of the pet peeves I have with the Wrath of Khan is how Kirk outsmarts Khan at the end by lowering his ship while in a nebula.....but then raises his ship to attack instead of rotating it.
Edit: I agree with a lot of what was said, but I think the point goes over Stardock's head. The problem usually isn't as simple of how realistic something is as opposed to internal consistency and acceptable breaks from reality.
As another example, one of the appendixes in David Weber's Honoverse books is notorious because an error wasn't corrected (though allegedly was noticed but, for whatever reason, the publisher didn't change the draft) which had the largest warships being less dense than cigarette smoke. That series is known for basically being a low level calculus textbook.
The Expanse isn’t phenomenal simply because of the believability of its sci-fi elements. It’s an intelligently written story with top notch characters. It’s just damn good story telling. 🤘
absolutely
Writing, it's always the writing.
Star Citizen currently has this issue. They've become so fantastically dead set on being as realistic as possible, they're not stopping to ask whether it makes for fun gameplay. And it almost always doesn't.
Its the problem with most sci-fi it's not very realistic it has some realistic properties but it's not. The problem is those realistic aspects that are overplayed when the style of governments and economics the mundane technical things that are very important to making something real is always not very flushed out and rightfully so because if that's the case then it's not fictional.
if you want a realistic space battle (in a not so far future), the 99% of the time would be spent on doing nothing staring at the abyss of space or sleeping in cryo (assuming we have mastered cryo tech) travelling from starting point to rendezvous point and the battle ended as soon as it started. no SFX, no drama. no crazy maneuver, no screaming tactics .. everything was done automatically by computer, whoever landed the first missile won.
"You added some science, so why not add more?"
This is where self-awareness is really important for stories. It's an unexplainable vibe, but I think most people can tell when a story is acting smug.
A lot of a sci-fi sits between fantasy and hard, and that middle ground comes in two flavours:
"That was clever, I wish they had more" and "What? Did they actually think that was clever?"
Cleanest example I can think of is the time dilation in Interstellar. They explain it in two sentences and the captain of the ship simply replies with "how bad?"
"One hour down there is... seven hours back on earth.... That's relativity, folks".
I hate the last piece of that line so much. This scene felt like I'm in the room with these characters getting the sitrep, just getting the basic facts. But the immersion is suddenly shattered by the movie basically addressing the audience directly with WOWEE LOOK AT THIS SCIENCE.
a interesting narrative to concider is the "Culture" series by Ian M. banks.
Its technological level are so high it dwarves most other sci-fi settings, but it is presented in a way that Feels realistic, or perhaps the word im looking for is Achievable.
Example: Many settings have force fields. Banks asks the question "If you are making forcefield walls, why not simply make the whole hulls of ships with forcefields?"
Realism doesn't have to be better
It's how it can relate to the current world situation
I loved that you tackled this. I would never have thought of it
consistency is a lot higher priority than realism... But I agree it is the best when there is some mysterious sci-fi thing that just can't work in reality but you can somehow relate to it and connect the dots
Internal consistency, and radiators. The two things you must have.
And yes, realism in sci fi is definitely appreciated! I definitely want to strive for that when I start writing short stories; I'm thinking somewhere in between Mass Effect and The Expanse!
There is a term for it in TV Tropes: Minovsky Physics. Where you have some handwavium to explain some of the fantastic elements while keeping everything else as realistic as possible.
@Battlesheep that's awesome! And that makes perfect sense, especially since my protagonist in most of these stories is going to be a human superhero!
Rather than realism, I would call it plausibility, and that together with consistency and good writing makes the sweet spot combination for a great show.
Terra Invicta has some pretty great ship designs and realistic orbital mechanics. the ships all seem realistic to me. the best non-alien derived tech looks awesome, and when I say "alien derived" I mean you don't need "exotics" to make them. "exotics" are materials that can only be acquired by defeating alien fleets and structures. the best non-alien derived radiator are a trio of triangular structures that extend from the rear of the ship by the main thrusters and glow as the ship flies or fires its weapons. the Alien radiators are a series of spikes that line the same area by the main thrusters. all of the best ship components need both exotics and anti-matter. anti-matter can be manufactured in quite limited amounts in extremely energy intensive station and base structures, but the best place to do that is to build Ring habitats around Mercury and all you'll need is like 1 tier 3 solar power farm for every tier 3 antimatter collider. it's all quite resource intensive, but definitely doable. the only truly out there thing in Terra Invicta aside from the "Exotics" is the method the Aliens used to get to the Sol system in the first place. Spoilers ahead:
the Aliens made a kind of wormhole that unfortunately for them is only one way. the Humanity First faction (which seeks to utterly exterminate the aliens at all costs) find a way to send shit back through the wormhole and send a perfectly engineered Bioweapon through to kill all the aliens on the other side
Realistic elements or not, If I can vibe with the story, then I’m hooked…. And it would’ve been cool as hell if they had radiators on their ships.
This is too true and would make enjoying shows and series so much better.
Not just the whole realist physics but literally anything that makes a op good.
For example I am a 40k fanboy and love the crap the setting. I also have the guilty pleasure of thinking up verses scenarios. I like the idea of how one faction would react and fight another from another setting. The idea of how a CSM covenant cruiser would go up against a imperial lunar class. To how whole wars would play out like an Imperium vs The empire. Thinking not how powerful the guns are but the logistics or tactics the other would play out. How one character would react to another and weather they would see common cause of a rivalry.
But when I log into a website and see the endless repeated phrase of, it's a stomp cause big ship kills smaller ship, or cave men science is dumb therefore smart man wins, get annoying.
It also doesn't mean one setting is better than the other. One can enjoy one more and it doesn't mean everyone else is dumb. Everything that is liked has a reason behind it and because it's the same as yours doesn't mean your a sort of person of superior tastes.
Reminds me of the game Starsector, sure it has some pretty bonkers weapons and ships but it also as a lot resource management that grounds the whole thing and makes it more "realistic".
"let people enjoy things, whether you do or not" - hottest take of 2022, Spacedock
The sound effect at 2:18 and 2:25 scared the heck outta me. I don't know if it's my headphones, but for some reason I thought something was going seriously wrong with my PC or some electronics somewhere in my room lmao