Not very much of my debut novel, When Morpheus Overslept, involves heavy use of hard science fiction. Though I spent a great deal of time—almost as much as writing the first draft—developing the technology that drove my world, very little of it actually came out in the finished novel, just as it should be. Nevertheless, as a means of promotion, as well as a means of relieving my burning desire to show off my world-building, I will be posting a series of blogs about the development of the ideas behind the technology of the future Earth in When Morpheus Overslept.
Part 1: Speculative Science and Plausibility
Hard science-fiction is taking what we currently understand about present-day science and from there extrapolating what might be possible in the future within the framework of an entertaining narrative. In the process of writing this book, I took this basic concept very seriously and tried to make the technologies used in the novel as realistic as possible. ‘Realistic’ is a difficult word to define in this context. Advanced technologies from our far future—say, a thousand years in the future—may be just as marvelous and inconceivable to us as a television set might have seemed to someone in 200 B.C. Additionally, it may not always be possible to create a ‘realistic’ piece of technology, as the needs of the novel’s plot may involve technologies so advanced that—in the words of Arthur C. Clarke—they are indistinguishable from magic. One could argue that faster-than-light travel alone—with its Einstein-defying qualities—is enough of a break from an acceptable projection of believable future science. Technically speaking, superluminal speed is still considered impossible.
Nevertheless, some efforts to maintain a measured perspective over this aspect of science-fiction writing is necessarily prudent, given that a writer may not wish the characters to have too easy a time, or to solve a situation too easily with technology that becomes a magical wand to wave with every problem presented.
Additionally, I have noted over the past several decades that most science-fiction literature, films, and television programs have a tendency to get it blatantly—sometimes astonishingly—wrong. They are forever predicting that technology will advance at a much more rapid rate than usually occurs. For example, the 1982 film Blade Runner took place in 2019—currently, as I write this, less than two years away—and it involved fully humanoid replicants (genetically engineered humanoids who were also physically and often intellectually superior), off-world colonies (thus, implying the use of faster-than-light travel technology), and flying police cars (implying anti-gravity). Equally, the science-fiction television series Space: 1999, which was produced in the mid-seventies in the immediate wake of the NASA moon landings, predicted that we would have a fully operational moonbase with hundreds of people permanently stationed there, functional force fields, laser cannons, and multiple re-launchable spacecraft (Eagles), all by the year 1999. Retroactively, credibility is indeed strained!
This author, having felt some amount of irritation and disappointment that such technologies still do not exist on the penultimate year of his fifth decade, after being ‘promised’ such by the available entertainment in his developmental years, has decided that later science-fiction predictions are better than earlier. The current anti-science brigade that seems to be sweeping the nation sadly encourages this expectation. Do I really give a damn about accuracy? No, but let’s just call it a challenge. Accuracy, or better stated, plausibility plus a good story is a winning combination. Thus, most of the technologies used by the characters in this novel are relatively less advanced than similar space opera-style science-fiction novels, despite the events taking place in the 27th century.
To the prior point, however, there is a certain threshold in developing fictional science where one must simply invent something in one’s imagination, no matter how fantastical it may be, and blithely declare that the scientists in the era in which the book takes place have resolved the problems inherent in developing that technology. Thus, the travel technologies used here are rather extraordinary, yet, hopefully, still plausible. Nevertheless, as a writer, I cannot be expected to fully explain how such technologies were invented, not only because that would be tedious to the reader, but also because I lack the scientific knowledge to do so—as does everyone else on the planet currently. I must, in other words, get on with it and write a good story.
So, rather than filling the pages of the book with endless equations and erudite descriptions of the functioning of my invention, I am required to simply allow such technologies to exist and function as they are required to do so for the narrative to unfold as needed. While this is rather obvious to the typical science-fiction reader, it might not be as obvious to the more casual reader of the genre. In either case, I feel obliged to explain the internal process to which I was engaged as I created the backstory for my novel.
Thus, I am going to spend a short amount of time explaining how the technologies in my novel function because their functioning drives much of the plot in this particular narrative, including, in particular, the crux of the time travel kerfuffle that creates the unique situation in which my characters currently find themselves. The technologies also, through their flaws and limitations, provide potential sticking points for the plots of this and any potential future novels.
To truly imitate the nature of invention in the real world, as I was informed by the television series “Connections” with James Burke in my youth, one needs to understand that there is no invention which arises in isolation and then stands singular without interaction with many other forms of scientific enterprise. An invention is something that often spontaneously arises out of seemingly unconnected thoughts and ideas that suddenly collide into something completely new, usually by way of a particularly scintillating intellect (or collection of intellects). The resulting synthesis of old ideas and new, this latest invention—an apparently coherent, sparkling and exciting new idea—may seem at first glance like it popped out of a wormhole from another galaxy when in fact it was created from countless other inventions. Almost invariably, it then goes on to create vast ripples throughout the scientific world, inspiring yet more great inventions, which again combine with new unrelated ideas and inventions in a never-ending cascade that leads to the present.
Every decade in my memory, until the 21st century, has had its one great invention that changed the world—often there have been two or more great world-changing inventions—and they have always created new ideas that were inspired by them. It is like dropping a heavy rock into a lake; it creates great ripples. Some inventions are smaller, like pebbles; some are so small that they barely disturb the surface. It is those great ones that truly make their presence known and change the world for better or worse.
Look carefully at what I consider the last great invention of the past century—the Internet. It was itself the result of innovations in several industries—the telephone, fiber-optic cables, the personal computer revolution, satellite communications (enabling faster transcontinental communications), advances in computer science and programming—all of which go back many decades in their origins. Computers were talking to each other as early as the late 1950s, but it took time before the technology advanced enough that we could talk to each other through computers. This user-driven intra-computer communication started as an experiment called ARPANET in 1969. In the seventies, many mainframes were connected by colleges across the nation to use as a means of sharing knowledge and learning. I, myself, used Usenet bulletin boards in my college days in the late-eighties, staying late after school to chat with other college students across the country about whatever interested us at the time—probably science-fiction television programs.
Now, look at what happened as a result of the Internet. Cell phones can connect to the Internet over the cell towers or through wireless connections via a router, producing phones that are not so much phones but tiny pocket computers that just happen to also make phone calls. Obviously, this has revolutionized the way that we communicate with one another. We are now living in almost social isolation unless the use of social media intervenes, the physicality of interaction permanently altered. If we meet, it is probably planned by text message on a cell phone or on a computer over the Internet, and it is probably scheduled on Facebook or some other phone app.
So, you can see how a science-fiction invention must be created if it is to be realistically done. It must be created as though it was a world-changing idea that created many other ideas and inventions that eventually produced the world that the science-fiction novelist has imagined. Thus, I will explain the great inventions of the 21st/22nd centuries in this new science-fiction universe.
In part two of this series, “Graviton Field Generators,” I will be writing about the main form of sub-light (relativistic) drive systems of the world of When Morpheus Overslept.
When Morpheus Overslept is due out on the 15th of February 2021. Pre-order the Kindle edition now at Amazon.com.
Yours in print,
—Michael