From a fantasy story, set in ancient Greece – “She used her daggers to send electricity flying at him.”

From a far future, fantasy story, with a mix of both magic and technology. As far as I can tell, characters are not from Earth, nor do they live on Earth. – “He turned on the PDA on his wrist.” And later, “She also had on a tank top with three Chaot letters on it.” And then, "When they finally arrived at the hospital, they took X-rays and checked to make sure there were no immediately life-threatening problems like internal bleeding. "

And yes, this is annoying. I don't have so much problem with the x-ray thing as some of the others you mentioned. The trouble with use of moder slang in scifi and fantasy is that it dates the book. To a certain extent, we can't help that, especially in scifi where our ideas of what might happen in the future are colored by current scientific understanding, but we don't have to try to date our stories.

PDA's and tank tops are right out. While I have no doubt that fashions are circular and will revisit us, it would not hurt us to at least try to be a little imaginative with how future styles might have changed. If I go with the theory that styles are circular, I at least tend to try to combine the twenties with the fifties to try to get a new mix. And even if tank tops exist exactly as they look today, they will certainly not be called that.

Your last example would not bother me - unless you think the author should invent a method other than 'X-rays' for doing that type of medical exam (and actually, would X-rays be used to check for internal bleeding???).

We are writing with the language we have - which makes sense in that your readers will understand it! An author can do a lot of work inventing your own slang or technical/magical terms, but the story in general will be in English (if that is your language). We don't assume the characters are not speaking something else, but I would have trouble reading something in pure Elvish! You don't want to sound too faked or forced (see Larry Niven's invented 'tanj' in Ringworld for an example), but you can use your own ideas.

I would have more issues with modern usage in 'distant past' stories - a la Hercules, Xera, or any of the hokey tv shows where they don't even bother to speak in an idiom appropriate to the time and setting (including using modern usage and slang and jokes!). "She used her daggers to send electricity flying at him" doesn't make sense to me anyway!

Using 'pda' might be a no-no unless writing something fairly current, but having a wrist unit of some sort makes sense.

I do understand what you are saying. In the end, if the way someone writes jars you out of the story, then there is a valid reason to be bugged, and you have learned an important lesson in how NOT to write!

Distant past, however, is another story. That would be distracting to me to throw current slang into the distant past.

This is a delicate thing...like a dance. Jules has a point. Essentially, we are translating our stories into modern English. We understand, or should, that a far-flung planet millions of light years away will not have developed Engilsh as their language.

Here's what OSC has to say about it in "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" (praphrased) Basically, if you are writing aobut something that has an equivalent concept in modern times, used the Engilsh word. So if the aliens are using an x-ray machine, then call it that. Don't confuse things by inventing a weird name. Without having read the book, I won't speak to whether it might have been better to come up with a new technology. My guess is, if its a minor point, I would overlook it and just enjoy the story.

If there is no matching conept in our language, then you're going to have to invent a term for it. This is a struggle. I've been thinking about a word to describe a new brain lobe for one of my stories for a year. (Off and on...I haven't thought about it THAT actively. )

I think there are really two different topics here...though they are related. One is slang words creeping into our stories. I stand by what I said before, this can often date a story if you're not careful. I think of this everytime I happen upon an episode of Star Trek TNG...they are always making word plays and making fun of Data for not understanding, and every time I watch I am constantly reminded that the language would have evolved in 300 years and those slang terms would no longer be used.

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To get around it, you'd have to invent new words. I assume that's what "Tanj" is, although I've never read those books, and I think doing something like that is usually a bad idea

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This is something I spent a long time thinking about a few years ago, and came to pretty much the same conclusion. I could have invented a word like tanj (yes, ww, this is a word that Niven made up for the purpose... it's actually an acronym for "there ain't no justice" and is used as an expletive by some characters).

Now, I'm not averse to inventing words, and there are many invented words used in SF that *should* be there. To use ringworld as an example again, there is a device in that story that basically is a remote control device for the brain that stimulates it to feel intense pleasure. No such device has (to my knowledge) ever been suggested before, so Niven had to name it (he called it a tasp, if memory serves).

But I came to the conclusion that invented words make books hard to read. Yes, they might make an interesting experience (I've never read A Clockwork Orange either, so I'm not certain as to how well it can work, although from what I've heard that is about the best you can expect it to end up). So you should limit yourself to only one or two at a time. Which means you shouldn't really waste it on slang.

Asimov and Silverberg collaborated on a novel called "Nightfall" at the beginning of it they have an interesting little author's or translator's essay in which they say, (greatly paraphrasing)look, these people don't look anything like us, but that's not important so we aren't going to talk about tentacles or say that they went seven kleegs in a half a varcix because the story is the important thing.

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Asimov and Silverberg collaborated on a novel called "Nightfall" at the beginning of it they have an interesting little author's or translator's essay in which they say, (greatly paraphrasing)look, these people don't look anything like us, but that's not important so we aren't going to talk about tentacles or say that they went seven kleegs in a half a varcix because the story is the important thing.

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The note was in Asimov's original short story, too. Which, honestly, is a better story -- I think they went too far with the novel.

It was an interesting approach, probably designed to cover for the fact that the characters in question _were_ essentially human, except for one critical difference. But that difference was all it took to make a brilliant story, so I'm not complaining.