posted
On the TV show Lost in Space the Robinson family carried laser guns. When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, he was afraid that lasers would be in every home by the time the show premiered, so gave the crew of the Enterprise "phasers."
Lesson: If you're going to write science fiction, you ought to know how close current technology is to sci-fi staples.
Thus I offer you the full color, 3-D, projected hologram of unlimited size that appears to float in midair. It's available now!
posted
So, you're saying that Roddenberry should not have called his weapons phasers? That he should have called them lasers? I guess I’m not following your line of thinking, here. The only ‘lesson’ I've learned is just the opposite: don’t use current names for your fictional technology … use names that sound like current or near-current technology. That way, the technology in your story might survive when technology in the real world zooms ahead.
We’re seeing holography more and more these days (very cool link), so my thinking is that I’d call my fictional technology something like ‘holovids’ or ‘pholograms’. So, readers might get the impression that the technology is ‘based on’ holography, only better. That’s why I like ‘phasers’ … it’s easy to imagine them as being based on laser technology.
I guess your ‘Lesson: If you’re going to write science fiction, you ought to know…’ statement has me scratching my head. Maybe I’ve misunderstood, but it sounds like you’re taking a shot at Roddenberry for not knowing what the future held for lasers. If so, I disagree. I think his hunch that the term ‘laser’ was too generic was right on target (so to speak).
posted
Parkypark: I'm saying Roddenberry did the right thing, Irwin Allen got it wrong. Everyone knows that real lasers don't do what the Lost in Space lasers did.
Now, if a writer writes a story with a projected, floating, 3-D hologram, he/she ought to make it behave like a real hologram. A writer might also do as you suggest and call it something different. But even then you need to be careful and give your 'holovid ' better functionality than a hologram. If holovids have capabilities inferior to real holograms, your readers will say: "Why don't they just use a hologram?"
posted
That makes more sense ... I'd really have a problem with Kirk commanding 'Lasers on stun'!
But then, how is Roddenberry's mistaken ‘fear’ that ‘lasers would be in every home by the time the show premiered’ a good example of how ‘you ought to know how close current technology is to sci-fi staples’? Because home lasers didn’t appear until thirty years later, when CD players became popular. And homes still don’t have anything like the ‘lasers’ depicted on TV (at least not here in my home!). Seems to me that both guys got the ‘how close’ part wrong ... one of them was just clever enough to call his weapons something other than ‘lasers’!
posted
And when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s nobody, and I mean nobody, forsaw the tiny computers we use today. They all talked about computers the size of the empire state building using gigawatts of power. The point beingn, a watershed development, by its very nature, can't be forseen. I also remember seeing CDs in the late 70s but look how long it took for the industry to work out the kinks in the standards.
[This message has been edited by MrWhipple (edited July 09, 2002).]
posted
Those were "Laser Discs", not "Compact Discs"
Phaser is better than laser because a Phased Array Simultaneous Emissive Radiator can do all sorts of things that a laser cannot (like being set to "stun", "kill", or "vaporize" ).
On the other hand, "holograph" and "hologram" are the best for anything that acts like a holograph, generating the appearence of a 3-D image by refraction of light through an interferance pattern etched in film or actively generated in a multiplaner LCD.
A "holovid" would be a good name for a holographic video...a 3-D movie. "Phologram" might be a good name for something that was representative of light in some other form...naw, 'tis a terrible name
One thing that is just over the horizon is anti-aging treatments that could actually activate controlled telomerase activity to keep all your cells young and immortal...thus extending lifespans indefinitely...you don't see that so often in science fiction (partly because 'tis only in the last decade or so that the underlying mechanism of cellular ageing has been discovered). It has long been assumed that an "elixir" of immortality belonged exclusively to the realm of fantasy, but we now know that it is a scientific possibility (in fact, given what we now know, the real puzzler is why we grow old and die at all).
quote:Those were "Laser Discs", not "Compact Discs"
So you're saying CD players don't use solid-state lasers? What, do you think they use phonograph needles or something? Laser Beams, Survivor, CD players use Frickin' Laser Beams.
[This message has been edited by parkypark (edited July 10, 2002).]
posted
Parkypark, I guess I should have included more details. Star Trek debuted in the 1966-1967 TV season. The first laser-based bar code scanner went into use in 1967 (here in Ohio).
I assume Roddenberry read Popular Science or something like that, and made a perfectly reasonable prediction that lasers would be demystified while his show was on the air. He invented the word "phaser" to keep from looking silly. It was a smart move.
In the first Star Wars movie, George Lucas had the Evil Empire shooting at X-Wing fighters with "turbolasers." IMO that was a dumb move. He should have called them something else.
posted
Whew! What a heated debate we have going. I have always been taught that Science Fiction has to be based in current science--in other words a logical extension of what is currently known. Otherwise you have fantasy.
So just pass the feldercab, and call it what you will, as long as you can make the reader understand what you say the thing is---then does the name really matter?
Shawn
Feldercarb reference to Space 1999 --- in which, in my opinion they used the silliest names for things.
posted
Sorry, srhowen. Feldercarb was actually felgercarb, and it was used on Battlestar Galictica, which featured many silly names for things.* Space: 1999, had excellent spaceships, moonbuggies, and other props, but wielded unrealistic laser weapons.
*The crew of the Galactica had the curse word "Frack" and the alcoholic beverage "Ambrosia," among other terms.
If you want cool terms, look at Red Dwarf. Their curse word is "smeg" and their weapons are called "bazookoids." Hilarious!
Red Dwarf even did a pretty decent job with the word hologram, at least in its first couple of seasons.
posted
Pioneer had a technology that it called laser disk that was a large platter and was used for video. What I was referring to was a CD format that I saw in a college lab that was basically the same technology that we use today. The storage densities were not quite as high but they were up there. There were used for high end info retrieval systems but the standards were all over the map and nobody could agree on a mass market standard. When that happened the industry took off and they got cheap.
My point was that sometimes we can look at what is happening in science today and make some predictions about what will happen in the future. But the fun part of writing SF is that there are things that we have no way of predicting and have no idea how they will impact society. That is where the truly creative mind has an advantage. If you can come up with a new technology or philosophy or anything that will impact society and then say "what can happen with this", then some cool SF will start showing up in your mind.
posted
So what you were talking about actually was a true "Compact" disc. Mea Culpa, I should have known that you weren't talking about those embarrassing dinnerplates
My the way, don't say the "s-word" from Lister's vocab unless you have some idea of what it means (and if you do know what it means, and say it anyway, then shame on you ).
I actually think that "turbolaser" is an okay term, as it could imply either a laser with an ultra-high energy throughput achieved by some novel form of electro-optical "pumping" or to a simple particle beam powered by firing an intense laser beam through a magnetically contained antimatter plasma. Obviously, though, neither of these technologies would be as flexible as a "phaser" device.
posted
I have always been taught that Science Fiction has to be based in current science
I would personally recommend current science is only used as a base for near-future writings.
As the world of science changes quite fast, it would be too easy to become quickly dated.
With far future sci-fi, perhaps it's better to let imagination run riot first, but keep observence of long established principles. But still being aware that even these are subject to modification.
posted
Survivor, Lister's favorite curse word is short for "smegma," the clinical term for the wax-like, sebaceous excretion of certain external human sex organs. IMO Grant & Naylor were brilliant in coming up with it, and I wish I could do as well!
Ambrosia is a real word, originally the name of the food eaten by Greek and Roman gods. According to legend (I think) this perfect food was one of their keys to immortality. It would make a good brand name, but as a classification of intoxicating beverage Ambrosia had a silly sound.
I have the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual- and it was made by the technical supervisors of the show, and they have just about every detail down. It says the Phasers operate on a modified version of the rapid nadion effect. The rapid nadions produce a pulsed proton in the heart of the device in a stabilized superconducting crystal.
posted
Ambrosia does indeed make a good brand name; over in Britain, we have a custard named Ambrosia Custard. It does quite well for itself, given that it's dirty yellow sludge (aka custard)... JK
Posts: 503 | Registered: Sep 2000
|
quote: It says the Phasers operate on a modified version of the rapid nadion effect. The rapid nadions produce a pulsed proton in the heart of the device in a stabilized superconducting crystal
That sounds fictional. I just searched "nadion" on the science citation index (it indexes several thousand peer-reviewed journals) and got nada.
posted
Well it's Star Trek, I seriously hope that the 'hand book' is not meant to be taken literally. After all, they're only 250+ years ahead of us, yet have developed the abilty to propel mass many times the speed of light for extended periods of time; replicate anything out of nothing; dissolve the monetary system; and discover dozens of alien species who all are surprisingly human in form...
Science fiction doesn't make it future science fact =p
Printer-friendly view of this topic
