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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45003
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45003
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The easiest way to show your technology fits science fiction is to have it break, and then get it fixed by an engineer with a spare part or something.

More generally speaking, in the reader's mind it will be "technology" if it is treated like "technology". In particular, show it can break and needs to get fixed by some guy with a screwdriver. In that scene the tech gets treated as we would treat a misbehaving iPhone, as an irritating inconvenience. We don't really know how an iPhone works either, but we don't _treat_ it like its magic.

You will see this trick used in Star Wars, repeatedly, the drives and machines malfunction. R2D2 may beep, and we can't understand that, but the actors all treat the beeping as a language they know, and respond in English (usually in a way that lets us know what R2D2 said).

You will see the same trick used in Star Trek, Scotty was always there to remind Kirk (and the audience) that the warp drives weren't magic (but apparently Scotty was magic, always doing the impossible.)

Treat it like a fallible machine, and it will be seen as one. As a general rule, magic contains some mechanism of action that is not scientifically explainable. That is true even in detailed magic systems.

Technology will not, the characters all think of it as a machine, even if they have no _exact_ knowledge of how the machine works; they know that machines depend on parts, the parts can wear out or break, and the machine will stop working.

Treat it like technology, and you don't have to really explain how it works, your readers will see it through the eyes of your characters, as a machine.

Original score: 9