How do sci-fi stories hold up if their premise or details become discredited?
I've been playing with the idea of writing a sci-fi story that would resemble those written roughly 50-100 years back: Things we normally would laugh out of court today, like Jules Verne's moon trip, moon people or Asimov's Foundation using microfiche.
I'm trying to understand how and why these stories live up so well, and in the face of new knowledge about the world, they still seem plausible. I'm not sure we're just turning a blind eye for the sake of an entertaining plot or story, as it seems it all fits neatly together (and trying to 'update' them would ruin their internal logic and consistency).
Any ideas on how to achieve this type of suspension of disbelief? And is this a legitimate/plausible exercise?
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Tolkien wrote a wonderful essay called "On Fairy Stories" in which he essentially rejected the notion of suspension of disbelief as an explanation of what is going on when a reader reads any kind of fantasy (and science fiction is a branch of fantasy). Tolkien argued that a story is an act of sub-creation (under God's creation). The author creates a world and makes it believable. The reader enters into that world and believes it.
There is no question of disbelief being suspended. It is all about belief in the sub-created world. If belief in the sub-created world ever wavers, it collapses entirely. The reader does not disbelieve and then suspend that disbelief. The reader enters into the sub-created world and either believes or does not believe.
So if you can successfully create a world in which the laws of nature as such and such as you want them to be, and if you can make the reader believe this world, they will believe and the story will work.
Some part of your readership will, of course, be Philistines for whom (to their great loss), entry into sub-created worlds is not possible. Nothing you can do for them, alas.
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The number one rule in making things believable is detailing. This applies to outlandish theories just as much as world-destruction type stakes. None of it will seem real without the details that lend it credence.
It is admittedly a bit more difficult with things we know to be false. I think in order to make these particular things seem realistic, you have to ask yourself the question, "what if we were wrong?" Research how we know something is false. Then ask yourself what small detail you could tweak, what small fact you can call into doubt, and how. The bottom line is that you have to explain why we were wrong (or why the impossible is now possible), and/or how we missed the truth (Via new technology, discoveries that 'disprove' the truth, etc. See comment by dmm below for details.).
With things that we know to be false, and indeed just about any kind of stakes, you will have to tweak things a little. Believability starts with the truth, and then uses details to show how the exact right events played out.
Note: Though I find it likely, I do not know if the authors of the examples you mentioned used this technique to build credibility, having not read the books.
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I think one thing you are missing in all of this is that at the time they were written these books were the latest science.
Let me give you an example of a few things I have seen in my own lifetime (I am 60):
- We went from wondering if we might find life on Mars to being assured there was no life on Mars to having the discovery of past life on Mars announced to having that brought in question to having water discovered on Mars to having people now wondering if that might mean the discovery of extremophile life on Mars.
- We went from not knowing how the dinosaurs died out to knowing it was caused by rock from outer space to now knowing the rock was the straw that broke the dinosaur's back to knowing ? killed them off sometime in the future.
Science is built up of layers of theory that become rock hard fact sometimes. Unfortunately every once in a while one of those rocks become shifting sand and then we have to go back and reevaluate everything we have put on top of it. This is bad for the scientist, but good for the writer.
Want to get rid of a few "known scientific facts?" All you have to do is come up with new theories that knocks them off their pedestals. You do not have to prove these new facts; just make sure they are feasible.
Don't believe me? Look at all the FTL ships out there in science fiction land. Current science gives them a thumbs down, yet we refuse to give them up. They are just too darned much fun. And who knows - we were all supposed to die when they came up with trains that went more than 20MPH according to some scientist of the day.
Also you need to know that about all those books about little green men on Mars that did not get shifted back and forth multiple times, is exactly the reason that old science fiction never gets labeled as fantasy. Once it is in the science fiction section no one is going to move it. Librarians would have a cat fit!
If you want to write an ole time science fiction story have at it. Just fill current theory full of holes because in 2020 such a scientist discovered... and then write your fun story!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/22062. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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