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Technobabble!
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Axonite
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:16 pm    Post subject: Technobabble! Reply with quote

Since it seems to be one of the most popular topics in comments and email, does anyone here have any thoughts on the subject of technobabble?

Or any favorite examples of it? Smile
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ttallan
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Give me strong characters that I care about, and I can put up with any amount of technobabble.

Also, if something is cool enough, like the SW lightsaber, or...um... *struggles to find an example from webcomics* the Law Machines from Buck Godot (wait, does that count as a webcomic if it appeared in print first?), then that trumps any technobabblish hand waving, too. At least, for me. Smile
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Arioch
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

They never tried to explain the lightsabers (in the movies, anyway), so it's not a technobabble problem. Actually, the lightsabers are a good example of something that doesn't need explaining... the name is descriptive, and we are shown by example how they work, and that's all the audience really needs to know. Star Wars is also pretty good at being vague about what the "blasters" are, tough the terms "laser" and "ion" do creep in occasionally.

Star Wars does engage in technobabble to some degree, and Star Wars probably has the most famously wrong example of technobabble that I can think of... where Han Solo claims that Millennium Falcon could complete the Kessel Run in 12 "parsecs"; the parsec (parallax second) is a measure of distance, not time as Lucas assumed.
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DrSaltine
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd hate to be anal (not as much about SW as I used to be), but the Kessel Run is measured in distance. Making it requires maneuvering around a cluster of black holes, so doing it in a shorter distance is worth boasting about.



But the most important thing about technobabble (doesn't matter if it uses actual scientific terms, scientific terms used incorrectly, scientific-sounding terms, made-up words or slang) is consistency. If you reference the engine emitting a particular type of particle, it must always emit that particle. If a certain character is responsible for monitoring a particular type of energy, they should be an expert on it. If a particular variety of energy shield can deflect somethings but not others, tactics should revolve around that.
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Axonite
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 7:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

DrSaltine wrote:
I'd hate to be anal (not as much about SW as I used to be), but the Kessel Run is measured in distance. Making it requires maneuvering around a cluster of black holes, so doing it in a shorter distance is worth boasting about.


Maybe, but there's no way of knowing that in the movie! That sounds like an explanation that was added later after the mistake was pointed out - was it in one of the books?
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ttallan
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's a question. Is technobabble just bad by definition, or can you have good technobabble? If your pseudoscience happens to actually work for your story, is it still called technobabble?
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zortic
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Beware of rambling response...

I think the reason this is such a popular subject is that it's the foundation of Science Fiction. Technobabble is fictional science.

In fantasy you're just expected to accept the fantastic (its magic!). But in Science Fiction, there is supposedly some sort of science behind the fantastic. Obviously if we could create the actual science to explain the fantastical elements, it wouldn't be science fiction and we'd all be incredibly successful inventers. So we're forced to invent science that doesn't exist (and probably can't).

So I think the answer to ttallan's question is that technobabble isn't bad unless, like any story telling element, it breaks your willing suspension of disbelief. And that's going to be a very subjective matter. It depends on how much your "fictional science" diverges from "actual science" and how much both you and your viewer are aware of each. The easiest approach is to minimize the science exposition, but this can't always be done realistically and it often lets the story fall back into that fantasy "it's just magic" feel (which can be an audience dissatisfier for the hard core SciFi fans).

Unfortunately it's not as easy as balancing "actual" and "fictional" science since the extremeness of the fantastical element may require more of one or the other type of science (this probably also has a lot to do with how far into the future your story takes place).

Instead I think it's more important that the two "mirror" each other. Your "fictional" science needs to seem similar to "actual" science. That means that it builds on what's already known, it is consistent and allows for predictable reactions (which a good author will twist in a realistic but entertaining form).

Also note that Technobabble doesn't only refer to mechanical science, it can also be applied to alien sociology, biology and psychology.
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sketchmonster
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Technobabble is a big hang up for my project I'm working on. It's sci-fi, so there's gotta be technobabble,(right?) But is there a way to keep it minimal? Typically, ships can have shields and energy weapons and warp drives and what not, but If you don't know much about those things does that disqualify you from writing it? I like sci-fi, and want to write a story about it, but I couldn't tell you what a fuckin' tachyon is... dammit. I think this might have been covered in a podwarp episode, but I can't remember it all.

What the fuck is a tachyon anyways? *interrupts answer* Who the hell gives a shit! Wink
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DrSaltine
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PostPosted: Sat May 24, 2008 3:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Axonite wrote:
DrSaltine wrote:
I'd hate to be anal (not as much about SW as I used to be), but the Kessel Run is measured in distance. Making it requires maneuvering around a cluster of black holes, so doing it in a shorter distance is worth boasting about.


Maybe, but there's no way of knowing that in the movie! That sounds like an explanation that was added later after the mistake was pointed out - was it in one of the books?


It was from the books.

I gave up on the books and expanded universe after Lucas decided to take a shit on the universe that he created by allowing other people to play in it, then decided to pay no attention to what they did in his sandbox and procede to rape it. I was way into the SW novels in middle and high school, but after Ep I I stared to feel it. After Ep III I decided to accept closure and stopped caring about SW.

But I will concede that Solo's bragging was phrased in such a way that time, not distance was the implied variable. People geekier than me have worked on explaining this. This is not necessarily a good thing.
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Chaos
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PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just to clarify: To me, technobabble means real technical terms (laser, ion, parsec, tachyon, etc.) used in ignorance of their meaning and/or real-world application, and thus usually out of context or in dubious combination with one another.

Here's my two cents worth:

Personally I can't stand technobabble, or "pseudoscience" in general. If you're writing something that you want people to take seriously, in using technobabble (or more generally ignoring real science) you are essentially assuming that your audience's level of ignorance is greater or equal to your own. For the audience members who don't fit into that category - you've probably just made them cringe and severely reduced their immersion in the experience. Doing your research can help minimise the number of people affected. If you're not going to do the necessary research or if you're dealing with something with no foundation in modern science (highly unlikely) then I think you should be working hard to draw attention away from the technology - and there's nothing wrong with that.

Naming your artefacts simply ("Light Saber" vs "Magnoplasma Saber") is good way to avoid the technobabble trap. The motion tracker from Aliens is another good example. It's used heavily as a plot device to add suspense, but it has a simple, descriptive name and a clear and obvious function, so we just accept it without a second thought. There's a lot of futuristic technology in that film, yet we're never given any reason to doubt its realism - because it generally looks reasonable and perhaps also because very little of it is actually explained. In the case of Aliens I think the apparent realism is vital to the overall suspense-driven nature of the film.

I prefer it when the science is "in the background", as it is in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There was barely any scientific jargon in that film at all, let alone technobabble (as far as I can remember at least), yet that film was packed to the gills with science. Comics (being a visual media) can also do this to some degree.

Things as simple as the physics of space-flight are usually ignored in films/comics. Personally I think a space battle is potentially much more intense and dynamic with real physics applied, rather than insulting everyone's intelligence and having everything fly like a terrestrial fighter aircraft or blimp. I personally don't think it's that hard to keep within the bounds of believability, even in far-flung future scenarios, but otherwise; accept that you're writing fantasy and don't try to rationalise it (i.e. don't succumb to Midichlorian syndrome).

To summarise my opinion: Technobabble is bad, but can always be avoided through halfway-decent writing or research. Made-up names for technical artefacts are fine (including things like "Warp Drive"), although ideally there shouldn't be too many for your audience to keep track of, and/or they should be kept simple and descriptive.

Regarding the podcast (episode 13): The Mark Twain quote sounds very similar to the latin phrase "si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses" - "If you had kept your silence, you would have remained a philosopher", or more commonly: "If you'd kept your mouth shut we might have thought you were clever". Hooray for trivia and highly appropriate quotes. =)
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Kyle Voltti
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PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 10:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd say technobabble is ok at the front of Science fiction to explain the rules but then as long as you keep within the rules you don't need much more technobabble. In fact when it's not used as a plot device (like it often is in Star Trek) you don't need to keep harping on it. Take Star Wars for example. Han explains the need to calculate the jump to hyperspace and that's the last time you hear about it.
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Alitorious
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PostPosted: Mon May 26, 2008 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think Arioch said it best in the last one: technobabble is still babble, and has no place in any good story.

Most technologies are related enough to modern day items, or the reader would probably know what they do anyway (shields, warp drives). There's no need for technobabble, and just because it's science fiction doesn't mean you need to throw in a scientific explanation why the phason colliders created an evil duplicate of your main character.

Imagine asking how a car engine works today, and getting the following answer:

The internal combustion engine relies primarily on the exothermic reaction from the combustion of hydrocarbons, such as hexane and octane, with oxygen inside an enclosed space. As does any gas, the increase in temperature inside a constant volume results in added pressure, which is mechanically converted to a rotation motion. This rotation motion is applied to toroidal surfaces composed of a polymer with a high friction coefficient, which can leverage this rotation motion against any flat surface to produce an acceleration.


If you didn't pick up already, I'm a technically-minded person, and so I have to try not to accidentally put technobabble in my stories. (It wouldn't seem like babble to me.) Smile I just have to remind myself that I'm writing a story, not a paper.

Incidentally, I don't think Han's claiming that he can do the run in 12 parallax seconds instead of 12 hours (or whatever) is technobabble, just bad science. He's bragging about his ship, and he's not claiming that his boson converters run at 91 jigagoobles or something, just saying "You didn't hear of that record I set? I'm supposed to be famous, here!"
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DrSaltine
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think the technobabble question can be scaled down to a few factors:

1) Explanatory. This is science fiction, and the key idea here is that there is fictional science involved. We do not currently posses warp drives and there is no real science behind them; you simply have to make stuff up. There is no getting around it. Any comic (or other sci-fi medium) dealing with space travel, time travel, alt universe travel, etc, will have to use technobabble at some point. There is no way around it. (NOTE: I may have to eat my words; this sounds like a challenge).

2) Details. Technobabble is important in creating your universe. It tells the reader what sorts of technology is available in your universe. You can establish that some characters know more about this technology than others. The key idea here is that it adds flavor to your universe.

3) Cop-outs. Using technobabble solutions to solve technobabble (or even ordinary) problems. Unless you are Consistent (below), this is just a cheap plot device.

4) Consistency. This ties in in with Details, but if you are consistent in your technobabble your readers will pick up on it and be able to assume that a certain word is assosiated with a certain type of energy, starship part, alien technology, etc, etc, etc, they will see how using that word in a different situation will yield certain results.

5) Metaphors. Think closely on the terms you use. Using scientific-sounding latin deriviations, for example, gives the reader some idea on what the device does. (For a personal example, I made up the word "Astrodynamic" for my steam-punk space-faring dirigible. It seemed right; I combined "astro" for "space" and "dynamic" for "movement". It described the dirigible perfectly. I later learned that "astrodynamics" is a real subset of physics that studies the movements of objects in space.)

Alternatively, following up on a stream of technobabble with a metaphor on explaining what it does is an acceptable way to balance details and co-outs. Saying that "the positively charged boron surge should cause a secondary feedback reaction in the central analyitical systematic jugushuiz" is confusing, but if you follow it up with an explanation like "just like a grapefruit getting hit by a billiard ball into a tub of soy sauce", everyone knows what's going on and it still provides the much needed details that lets everyone know that the chief engineer knows what he's talking about.

And there is the side philosophical issue about the MEANING of metaphors, but I'm going to ignore that for now because I am tired.


This is an interesting list, and I may come back and edit and add to it. The technobabble question is very popular and there are lots of way to look at it; this is only scratching the surface I'm sure.
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ttallan
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 3:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Also, much as we all complain about technobabble, we all seem to be drawn to it like electrons to a positively charged object. Geekishly-minded people (let's be honest here) love to have something to complain about. For all its technobabbling sins, Star Trek went on to inspire legions of kids to become astronomers and engineers. Not to mention legions of adults to publish things like The Nitpicker's Guide.

I would argue that it's the technobabble, the far-out science that may or may not have a basis in reality, that makes it all fun. Back to the Future would have been a much more boring movie without the Flux Capacitor! Wink
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Kyle Voltti
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 10:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno Babble is like spice in a meal. Not enoughand you may as well not add it in the first place... To much and it overwhelms the palette.... but just the right ammount of peppering and it makes the mael sing on your taste buds. The skill is in knowing how much and what kind to use.
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