posted
I'm assuming that is a rhetorical question, since I never claimed to make that particular assertion myself. Since I'm a loudmouth, however, I feel the need to respond anyway.
My take on it is this: that was just his advice. Use antimatter drives all you want. Startrek fanboys will flock to you in droves. That just isn't the sort of thing I want in my stories.
posted
Actually, I haven't yet written a short story in which it was important enough to expound upon the methods of energy production. I imagine there are such stories, but I can't imagine many in which the actual workings of the propulsion would be necessary to describe.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Apr 2002
|
quote:Also, can anyone else shed any more light on what was actually said?
He said - Don't use antimatter. Just don't. Antimatter has been used as a magic fuel source since the 60's. Using it makes your story seem dated.
He also said - Nothing I say is written in stone. Go ahead and violate the rules if you are willing to pay the price.
My interpretation - If you have a really good reason to use antimatter, use it. But the story had better be related to antimatter (read - hard sci-fi). If you don't know what antimatter is, or are unwilling to explain it in detail, no one is going to get the impression your story is good sci-fi. They will believe you are relying on old cliches from Star Trek.
If you're not going to bother explaining your cool super engines anyway, why not use a concept no one's ever heard of. For instance: a Klastion drive that runs on tri-polar pletanite.
[This message has been edited by SteeleGregory (edited June 23, 2004).]
posted
I thought antimatter was used well in Angels and Demons by John Brown. (Also wrote the DaVinci Code, which I hadn't read, but my mom said Angels and Demons was better.)
But generally when I hear antimatter, i think of Star Trek, and I thikn of cliches. In fact, I thought of it when the word was first mention in John Brown's book, but he went into a detailed (but not oeverly complicated) explanation that convinced me that he both knew what he was talking about and that it was essential to the plot.
posted
Excuse my ignorance, but I didn't know that antimatter was used in Star Trek (clearly my experience watching it is limited). Could someone briefly fill me in?
Posts: 116 | Registered: Jun 2004
|
posted
Trek used antimatter as the fuel for the warp drive. I'm not sure whether it was mentioned in the original series, but I'm pretty sure it was in the films. They used to go on about matter-antimatter 'intermix' ratios until about series 4 of The Next Generation, when some bright spark worked out that the only ratio that would make any sense is 1:1. And for some reason this startlingly obvious fact was so difficult to understand that when Wesley was sitting an exam to enter star fleet academy, there was a question about it that took him _ages_ to work out.
They also use the unstable nature of antimatter as a plot device from time to time. They call it a "core breach", the idea being that the antimatter fuel escapes and utterly destroys the ship. Obviously this is a situation that must be narrowly averted with only seconds to spare. Or even after the fact, making use of time travel.
posted
Oh, I get it. So if you're writing hard SF, then antimatter is fine.
Basically this advice is like "don't have programs running 'on the Net' rather than on multiple computers connected by the Net."
Don't use anti-matter if you have no idea what it is and what it can do.
In my universe, only special military ships (and certain even more special research vessels) actually use much antimatter (because it makes things go BOOM!), but the subject does come up from time to time.
Anyone remember the time that Picard succumbed to some kind of temporal field induced psychosis and actually used his finger to draw a on an expanding cloud of antimatter? It was one of those "go back in time to prevent core explosion" episodes. They did explain that he'd gone crazy, but it didn't do anything bad to his finger (probably because earlier in the episode they'd already done a bit where he tries reaching for something caught in an accellerated time field and hurt his hand that way--can't hurt your hand twice in the same episode, you know).
posted
I just read 'Waldo' by Robert Heinlein. It's a novelette. A major thread of the story is an interesting power generation method. You might get some ideas there.
Posts: 1672 | Registered: Apr 2004
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
