A science fiction story is inadequate if it does not talk about technology at all. Most science fiction stories emphasize either the importance of technology or its ramifications. Oftentimes, these stories demonstrate how technology has made life easier and more convenient or provide speculations about the future of technology in various aspects. Nonetheless, regardless of however it is depicted, no one can deny that technology is a crucial part of science fiction.
If you are an author (whether professional or amateur) who wants to create a fascinating and remarkable science fiction story, then you need to learn how to come up with a fictional technology that your story can offer to the readers. This fictional technology should be a product of your imagination. It should pique the interest of the readers and introduce them to various possibilities.
The Madhouse Projects by Rick Badman is an example of a good science fiction book that contains elements of fictional technology. Its story mainly revolves around the character of an automotive engineer named Dick Thurman who works at an underground research and development installation in Arizona called the ‘Madhouse’. In this gripping tale, Rick Badman particularly introduces the readers to several interesting and imaginative fictional technologies, such as levitated flying cars and a micromachine system that allows people to experience good mind trips. Generally, the use of these fictional technologies makes The Madhouse Projects by Rick Badman an even more intriguing story.
If you are planning to write a science fiction story containing your very own fictional technology like Rick Badman, then you might want to keep on reading! This article lists down below some of the most important things you must do when writing about fictional technology.
Give your fictional technology a name
In creating a fictional technology for your science fiction story, one of the very first things that you should do is to come up with a good name for it. Since your fictional technology is invented by you (one that came straight out of your imagination), you have all the right to name it with whatever you want. However, when thinking of a name to call your fictional technology, you should also think about the readers. In general, your fictional technology should be named with something that the readers can easily relate to. It should be easy to remember, but it should be unique at the same time.
Make your fictional technology accessible and interesting
This is a common mistake among several science fiction authors – when they write stories about technology, they tend to fill it with technical jargons. More often than not, these technical jargons only confuse the readers. For this reason, you need to keep your jargons in check when writing about fictional technology in your story. While there may be plenty of techie readers out there, the majority of the reading population is not as technical as some science fiction authors frequently assume. Oftentimes, the readers will not care so much about how your fictional technology works, but rather how it affects your characters. So, unless you are trying to become the next Steve Jobs, you should focus on how your fictional technology can make your story more interesting.
Establish rules for your fictional technology and stick to them
Inventing a fictional technology for a science fiction story is almost the same as building a distinct world for a fantasy story – both of them require specific rules to be established. In science fiction, particularly, these rules basically demonstrate how a technology should work. They limit what a technology can and cannot do based on the demands of the story. As a science fiction author, it is important for you to always stick to the established rules whenever you are writing about your fictional technology. Never break any of these rules just to fit what you want to happen in a certain scene or chapter. By being consistent to the establishes rules of your fictional technology, you are saving your story from the possibility of becoming illogical and absurd.
Overall, when writing about fictional technology in your science fiction story, you always need to be imaginative, clear, and consistent. Your fictional technology should be a product of your imagination, not an imitation of an already existing technology. It should be accessible and interesting enough for other people to understand and be invested in, and the way you explain or demonstrate it should always be logical. Indeed, technology is a crucial part of science fiction. So, regardless of whether or not you are techie in real life, you should definitely consider creating your own fictional technology for your science fiction story.
I would argue you’re missing a few other very important things that kind of defeat the purpose of any of that without including them. Namely…
4: A purpose for the technology. It actually needs to “do” something of value in the world that would alter how the world works. If the technology doesn’t actually do much that matters, then it’s not going to really capture anyone’s imagination.
5: The technology should be a tool. As in, you use it to do stuff, not you press a button and it solves all your problems for you. Using a force field to lift heavy objects, or to cut things are tool usages and great to have around. If it’s a solution rather than a tool, then you start running into the Star Trek Voyager problem where you have to spend half the episode explaining why you can’t just use the thing that solved all your problems magically last time. These combine to lead into…
6: Affects the plot and world. With a tool, you have a way for the technology to give characters things they can do with the technology to help them with various problems, and to create new problems that didn’t exist before. With a purpose for the technology in the world, it will also alter how the world behaves in a meaningful way, which will help to define your fictional setting as different from reality or other settings, and make it naturally give new writing prompts to you for things that would occur because of your technology. This helps a ton with writer’s block as logically looking at your tech and determining the problems it’ll create and how it’ll change the economy, the environment, how characters behave and such, are interesting aspects in and of themselves.
So yeah, I think those are also needed to be taken into account, and if you don’t have those things, you don’t really have much of a reason to include the technology other than as a minor curiosity.