I will try to talk in general get
written but I will illustrate it with
one particular one science fiction a
novel has everything that the last video
had changed all that he was talking
about it story and the rest of it but it
had some very special ingredients and
that is what I want to talk about I will
talk about how one particular science
fiction novel got written impact in
particular this one this one and more or
less tell the story of how we wrote it
wonderful quote from Stephen Baxter
about this book classic science fiction
a startling in the original premise a
character-driven Club exploring by
premise with great imagination and
ingenuity recalls ribbon at his best
with better science Stephen Baxter well
if you are such fiction fans you know
that Stephen Baxter is a very big name
and Livan is a bigger one so it’s a bit
like Kurama comparing you favorably with
Krishna and I was dazed for a day but
the main point
this illustrates this is plan section so
I can use it as an example so let’s see
how it was written in terms of plot
design and world is a sparkling original
premise I’m not going to tell you the
sparkling an original premise because
that’s a spoiler but consider the less
startling the less original one because
people have written books about it
before and how we might explore it
suppose you have matter duplicators you
can make copies of everything anything
including people so this will have all
kinds of implications I can quote
several wonderful novels on that but I’m
not going to my time
no more mass production where is the
iPhone production facility he would make
one i phone and duplicated can you copy
your salary employees and buy the rest
if your wine is talking over your
husband which is your wife who owns the
house house isn’t one of the few things
that can’t be copied because it has
landed then can’t be copied can’t be
increased most property but not all
becomes intellectual property
fascinating things to explore hard facts
diction you’ve got to be consistent in
your search in your world and think
about what matter duplicators would mean
they require radically new physics ok
that’s fine that’s what subsection does
but even new physics can do that it can
completely control energy matter
conversion because it’s much easier to
just do raw energy Lisbon to produce
action by actin copies of DNA and so on
so clearly you will have almost
unlimited energy if you have matter
duplicators I think place things like
Planet Buster’s spacecraft close to
speed of light
synthetic planets and all the non which
again it will be a grand book but it
would make exploration of the human
aspects can it copy you can’t accompany
copy it speller employees who were to
happen it would rather distract from
benefactors so how do you focus on those
well plot method humans get a limited
version from outside without being able
to explore the planet
the implications and that is exactly
what the levels were didn’t do matter
duplicators did okay how do you do that
how to do it in the book how to make a
plot out of it
commonly vessel crash lands on the
planet the technology drops because of
the crash they lost so much no
electronics they discovered the
applicators well they discovered the
things we call sente and I will tell you
what they are because you’ve got to read
the book if you want to read the book I
would spoil it for you since they are
different from a communicators but I
think they are even more interesting but
not from local intelligent engines on
that planet because human alien contact
isn’t where we want to focus that’s
another interesting line story but not
our first question and anyway how come
the aliens have had planning Buster’s
and recipe you can same problem so from
local unintelligent babies plus about
two billion years ago combination of
mutation escape routes
cippec evolution led to a huge variety
of ways of using these things and
mustache plots because you get symbiotic
animals using the sin tape that are
actually from the plants and the hills
land discoveries and synthetic
technology which they have no way of
knowing
works they can good it it replaces the
earth science and technology they lost
addiction generations to explore the
possibilities in one book it’s hard to
make that the pot so what lies 2000
years later a group of six young star
book also crash and explode the society
the first units of name so they get the
first view of the planet it looks like
this they get Hebrew letters to the
continents that’s all we know and they
either here or here as a rescue beating
the button that they can press roughly
but would get them rescued but they
don’t know anyone now narrative
inevitability means that they pick the
wrong one so we get to experience a lot
but the planet has made travel from one
to the other that has been a basic plot
element for nearly three thousand years
maybe more and it still works very well
okay but now how did they get there not
at sublight speed because multiple stars
and planets they take tens of years
hundreds of years to reach if you travel
even with very close to the speed of
light so you have to have some kind of
faster than light travel but the usual
methods in science fiction books they
ignore relativity pretty completely they
say you can jump from here to here at
the same time but time the same time
between different places cannot be
defined it doesn’t exist so casual use
of wormholes and jump drives it really
implies time travel what will make
another talk
that’s not what this book was to explore
I didn’t want to write a time travel
book 40 years ago I wrote a book on
general relativity and I’ve got too much
and a scientific conscience to just
assume well most so a common will be
build increasing everywhere according to
all the service jobs are only possible
between space plans with equal can’t pay
value but increases faster according to
local matter
observers where local matter is denser
so here you see we come to us people’s
value are closer space
you’ll be able to jump from here to
follow enough in your past that it would
actually be able to reach you in a
signal at the speed of light you’d have
trying travel again I don’t want to
write the plane tried the story and
nature doesn’t want to either so what we
get is a simultaneity quake and this
point you get at the same moment eight
years seem to go by on that one so we
it has interesting possibilities we
didn’t make a great deal of it in the
book directly but it affects the culture
because you can’t run an empire if you
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find it’s disappeared from view so it
goes quite quickly so that’s how they
we really mattered the difference
between shallow places on the
the abyss so we had to work out the
marine geology so this is a map of the
whole planet and follow this history of
this planet
we needed a deep atmosphere so that
needs a subduction zone had to be here
but that means a volcanic line a
volcanoes there but just the wind eulogy
works however first map of this planet
has sketches of that continent like this
ok same shape but no volcanoes there so
volcanoes for this book we move
mountains so I let you explore this and
what’s our total time so I will tell you
the effects of sin pay on transport very
big ecology very big war we totally sex
is very strange
cooking religion medicine entertainment
gorgeously but we argued our way through
all those factors in a lot of detail
you’re free to find errors and the point
is that this process is typical of
science fiction this book is not special
that way this is what the game is
writing and reading hard science fiction
reading it means arguing in your mind
with it that’s one reason why we’ve got
so many co-author books because the
authors rather than one in science
fiction much more than in other fields
because creating the world is easier the
two like creating a person in fact
pre-created
mormon a world we created the whole
galactic society and when heroes get off
the planet when they
we reach that rescue beacon and get
rescued
even that is complicated since I have
very destructive effects all those
possibilities and a technological
society managers could see much more of
them when the primitive Society of the
colonists so in the sequel which is
called rock style and is not yet
published we do get to Planet Buster’s
so we have a a comedian service team so
thank you very much
seton.com is full of spoilers maybe you
like to look at it after reading book or
maybe you have don’t have the attitude I
can’t read the Gospel of Matthew because
not spoiled it by giving away the ending
I don’t think that way about fiction but
a lot of people do anyway
a lot of details of the ecology and we
have fan art space for it anyway fan
fiction fan science engineering think
about what designs you
with these very strange things
cippec as a form of the discussion and
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