Factoring Progress into our stories.....

[HordHolm]

I am more concerned about using technology before it is available.

My current WIP series is set in the early 90s, and I have to keep reminding myself that mobile phones were not widely available.

I've just finished a story set in 1930, and the amount of research I had to put into what car could be driven (and whether it had a starting handle - only just being phased out), and even what kind of condoms they had (latex ones first on sale in England in 1929, to the relief of my protagonists) was quite daunting. All so that some 97 year old doesn't read it and tell me I've got something wrong by two years.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I've just finished a story set in 1930, and the amount of research I had to put into what car could be driven (and whether it had a starting handle - only just being phased out), and even what kind of condoms they had (latex ones first on sale in England in 1929, to the relief of my protagonists) was quite daunting. All so that some 97 year old doesn't read it and tell me I've got something wrong by two years.

I had my character write with a ball point pen in December 1945, and I got a comment complaining that they weren't available in the US then. But, of course they were, I do my damn research. They became available earlier in the year.In fact, the reason I specified that it was a ball point was that it was still something a person would take note of then.

 

[MrPixel]

I specified that it was a ball point was that it was still something a person would take note of then.

Did you intend that pun?

 

[ronde]

Years ago when I spent one summer in the UK with my mom and dad, we were sitting in a pub in Devon and my dad got talking to an old guy there - he was fascinating - hed worked in the Brit aircraft industry and started off in the 1930's working on the old flying boats and helped design and build the Swordfish - an early British biplane naval torpedo bomber - and I remember he said something about working on the Hawker Hurricane and then on the first British jets, but what really stuck in my mind was that he was on the design team for the Concorde - he was retired for years when we met him, but there was a guy who started on wood and canvas aircraft and worked right thru to the Concorde over 45 or 50 years or whatever.

Mind you, I still find it hard to believe we landed on the moon in 1969, with the last cfrewed landing in December 1972, 50 odd years ago, and in that 50 years we have never even tried to return or do anything significant in space until Elon MUsk came along. Sooooooo short sighted. By now we should have had cities in space, moonbases, and be figuring out how to colonize Mars. SOmetimes progress is not fast enough. I guess what does make sense is that where we have made rapid progress, it's all been driven by the market, whereas deep space is so expensive that really only someone like Elon Musk could do it privately, and as Boeing has proved, govt funded really does not move anyhing like radically enough to make rapid progress.

If you look back at the history of technology what you'll see is that each technology began as an idea followed by slow but gradual development. Then, one day, somebody put all that development together, saw a possible demand and possible profit, and BAM, there's a marketable product. I learned computer programming on an IBM 360 that took up a room the size of a small house. As small developments were made, the transistor probably being the most significant followed by the technology to put those transistors into an integrated circuit, they yielded the personal computer. It would sit on a desk if it was a big desk, and it was faster than the 360. After another few years of development of further miniaturization of electronics and battery technology, Apple gave birth to the cell phone that would fit into your pocket instead of in a bag that weighed five pounds.

All exploration from the migration out of Africa to the caravans into the middle east and china to sailing voyages that discovered that Europe wasn't the only thing on Earth were driven by people looking for something better or for something they could sell. The only thing mankind has done just to see if we could was the lunar landings.

I truly believe we're in the interval between the lunar landings and expansion into the universe. The factor driving the slow progress is both the cost and the travel time required. We can't go much faster in space than we already do with fuel powered rocket motors, but I believe there is ongoing research into plasma engines powered by nuclear reactors that will allow virtually unlimited travel distance as speeds we can't yet achieve. Once that technology is developed, it won't take long before we have colonies built on the moon and Mars utilizing local materials. There's a market for the minerals on the moon, mars, and the asteroids. It just takes too long and costs too much to get them back to Earth or to the moon and Mars.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Did you intend that pun?

Nope. I guess it's a natural talent.

 

[dirk2024]

This is someting I'm getting my head around - that science fiction isn't so much science fiction as reality now, and we are living it, and it's something we have to factor in when writing set in the present.


What ele is there that we need to start factoring in?

Sexbots?

 

[draco519]

I confess; slice of life writing/rping is mind dulling for me. I've done some of it, but I write to escape this modern world we live in. I can't bring myself to write it. I stick to either fantasy/historical or steampunk/cyberpunk. Typically having built my own world. And that's okay; everyone has a style.

So, in the "modern day America" writing i've done? My characters and setting were monster hunters. (Supernatural meets Hunter the Reckoning lite.) I typically like the technology in the early 2000s. Flip phones, not anyone could turn on a stream whenever, that kind of thing. Digitcal cameras (like the jamcam I had many years ago) typically could take 20 pictures and you had to plug them into a computer to see them.

It makes it so much easier to write compelling stories about people and not having a "Somebody would've seen that and filmed it" plot hole.

 

[old_prof]

Sexbots?

My first sci fi story was about the near term future of sexbots. (And damnit spell check, I am not trying to talk about sextets.)

It isn't a great story, but I thought it was fun Dolls.

 

[filthytrancendence]

govt funded really does not move anyhing like radically enough to make rapid progress.

Godda push back on this one.

Not that I'm a big government guy. I'm an anarchist. But this just isn't what happened.

We landed people on the moon because of government spending. We developed computers because of government spending. We developed the internet because of government spending. We developed GPS because of government spending. We developed the foundation of LLM's because of government spending. The US telecommunications infrastructure, both for the internet and cellular phones, was publicly funded before it was chopped up into pieces and sold for cents on the dollar to private corporations.

Musk and his ilk are good at exactly one thing. Hype. Every bit of the tech foundation they exist on top of came from public spending.

And on the flip side. Public spending on R&D and exploration has slowed down because people bought the line that corporations can make more "rapid progress."

And sure. They do. They make rapid progress toward profit. Not the public good. It's because of people like Musk that we haven't been back to the moon since 1972. He's not the savior. He's the quintessence of how it happened.

 

[dirk2024]

My first sci fi story was about the near term future of sexbots. (And damnit spell check, I am not trying to talk about sextets.)

It isn't a great story, but I thought it was fun Dolls.

It was a fun story, though brief. I hope you write more of it.

 

[Writer61]

govt funded really does not move anyhing like radically enough to make rapid progress.

Godda push back on this one.

It is a mixed picture.

A lot of development comes from wars, which are government-funded. In peacetime, as well as the space race, there is Concorde, which would not have happened without support from the British and French governments. Further, it is debatable if Airbus would have happened without government subsidies.

 

[dirk2024]

Musk and his ilk are good at exactly one thing. Hype. Every bit of the tech foundation they exist on top of came from public spending.

And on the flip side. Public spending on R&D and exploration has slowed down because people bought the line that corporations can make more "rapid progress."

And sure. They do. They make rapid progress toward profit. Not the public good. It's because of people like Musk that we haven't been back to the moon since 1972. He's not the savior. He's the quintessence of how it happened.

Exactly!

 

[Voboy]

It is a mixed picture.

A lot of development comes from wars, which are government-funded. In peacetime, as well as the space race, there is Concorde, which would not have happened without support from the British and French governments. Further, it is debatable if Airbus would have happened without government subsidies.

Yeah, this: conflict makes the government move fast. They most definitely innovate quickly when they're at war. They got us to the moon at a rapid pace (especially by gov't standards) because there was a conflict involved and politicians knew that success would translate to votes and pork for their districts.

Once we "beat the Russians," the calculus no longer involved national prestige. So we stopped going to the moon. Politicians reallocated that money to things they thought would get them elected more reliably than yet another trip to the moon.

 

[Britva415]

What ele is there that we need to start factoring in?

Sexbots?

Exactly.

My opinion is that we don't need to factor any of it in, except to the extent that it directly affects the plot.

A sexbot could easily be a Chekov's Gun in a Literotica story. Self driving car? Maybe, but if it isn't, then it just isn't.

 

[PapaRomantic]

Two things:

First - this thread has been WONDERFUL to read because nobody is trying to lob grenades at each other! It's nice to see...please keep it going!

Second - as I've read it, I've come up with a wonderful S/F story idea, which is a category I honestly thought I'd never pursue. It looks into a problem in the future which requires a solution from the past to resolve. I think it's going to be fun to write!

 

[StillStunned]

Most of my stories are set "now," whenever that is. I include technologies that I see and use, but only if they're relevant to the story. That's a limiting standard. Despite changes in technology, most stories are still about how humans relate to each other.

My contemporary stories are set "now", but with eighties music. Because in my stories I'm God, and any world is better with eighties music.

 

[NotWise]

My contemporary stories are set "now", but with eighties music. Because in my stories I'm God, and any world is better with eighties music.

My current story is from "now" but with heavy metal music from the early 2000's cuz Zelda's like 45.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It is a mixed picture.

A lot of development comes from wars, which are government-funded. In peacetime, as well as the space race, there is Concorde, which would not have happened without support from the British and French governments. Further, it is debatable if Airbus would have happened without government subsidies.

It's fascinating that people keep using Concorde as a symbol of progress.
It was a net money loser that only survived via government subsidies, hasn't flown in 22 years and was replaced by nothing.

That's not exactly progress.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Future proofing stories is never something I worry about. If they're contemporary, any reference to "now" uses whatever jargon or cultural reference is used today, no explanation or explication is needed.

If a story is set in the past, my memory is adequate and my knowledge of history is pretty good, and if I'm not sure about a detail I can check it. What I don't do is cater for readers who have no historical awareness, that's their issue, not mine. Although it does depress me that so many people have no clue, as if it's only the last few years that's important. But then, my father was a historian, and academically I followed in his footsteps, so that's my perspective on that.

And if a story is set in the future, like my yarn about an astronaut and an alien angel on Titan, I just make stuff up. Who will ever know?

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's fascinating that people keep using Concorde as a symbol of progress.
It was a net money loser that only survived via government subsidies, hasn't flown in 22 years and was replaced by nothing.

That's not exactly progress.

It was at the time, which is the point being made. The fact that nobody wants SST now is another thing entirely.

 

[Voboy]

It's fascinating that people keep using Concorde as a symbol of progress.
It was a net money loser that only survived via government subsidies, hasn't flown in 22 years and was replaced by nothing.

That's not exactly progress.

You could say the same thing about the space shuttle, though, which unquestionably led to very great things in a number of areas.

 

[Writer61]

It's fascinating that people keep using Concorde as a symbol of progress.
It was a net money loser that only survived via government subsidies, hasn't flown in 22 years and was replaced by nothing.

That's not exactly progress.

Concorde may have lost money, but it was progress.

The Apollo program had no income at all, do you want to argue that it wasn't progress?

As for being replaced by nothing … Boom would not agree.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Concorde may have lost money, but it was progress. How profitable was the Apollo program?

As for being replaced by nothing … Boom would not agree.

When Boom is actually selling planes we can talk. Lots of companies have come and gone promising economical supersonic travel.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It was at the time, which is the point being made. The fact that nobody wants SST now is another thing entirely.

Not really, it was a dead end.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You could say the same thing about the space shuttle, though, which unquestionably led to very great things in a number of areas.

Such as?
The promise of the Space Shuttle was cheap, reliable, reusable access to space. It was going to be reliable and cost effective.
It wasn't.
I realize a certain generation has a romance with the Space Shuttle, but it was over sold and under delivered by any reasonable metric.