Sci Fi writing questions related to language and other things

Cafe Society
1

I am trying my hand at writing a Sci Fi novel that’s been kicking around in my head. It skirts the realm of fantasy as it is sufficiently removed from Earth that the technological levels in some ways seems inferior to Earth’s technology.

There are two major societies that are separated by a major piece of geography. I mean like totally isolated from one another. One is super high-tech as we recognize it but it is so extremely regimented that the rural peasant farmers while using advanced crop growing techniques are still using the same sort of tools that we might have used pre-industrialization. There are not massive highway systems or visible telecom infrastructure. The society is regimented in such a way that as you get closer to the seat of power the tech level goes to levels that even surpass our own. It is a state of billions of people all in one state, think Catholic Church, Meets Shogun, Meets the Ministry of Information in Brazil. Our protagonist is from this society.

He is thrust into the other society, after having been trained by his own society from the very beginning of his education when he showed certain aptitudes, all of their education is based on siphoning people off into different tracks of study so that they may be hyper-specialized. So even his teachers do not know what he is being trained for as his track is unique and requires him to sit in on many various tracks.

The other society is much more primal. There is no explicit rigid organizational control like there is in the other society. Our protagonist needs to learn to communicate being thrust into an alien society with no preparation whatsoever for their languages other than the attempts to teach him universal language forms that are generally universal to mammals and humans in general. So his education consisted of a lot of understanding of tones and phonemes, general anatomy, movement and animal behavior, all to prepare him for learning to communicate in this alien culture.

So what I need are people to examine what they think about general communication. Things like Paul Ekman’s work on microexpressions, mammalian behavior. What forms of communication transcend culture and even species?

Now the second part, the other society is based around a group of people who diligently make records regarding the society. It’s essentially a corporatist society where the society coheres around the usefulness of certain elements. People are also siphoned off and guided toward specializations based on certain behavioral traits, but this isn’t done by a centralized authority, it’s more done by the various corporations using headhunters to find promising candidates. Now, unlike the other culture this society doesn’t have what we recognize as high technology at all. There is no electricity, and no combustion. Maybe a few alchemists working in their labs have access to such things, I haven’t decided, but it’s not spread out on a societal level. Basically their system is based off of a genetic hierarchy. Breeding and lineage is extremely important, but it’s far more granular than Earth based feudalism. So they don’t have computers to decode the genome but they do have the concept of natural selection and evolution, and they basically breed their technology over the course of years, centuries and even millenia. So they have a concept of a genetic code but it’s more in a sense of mixed essences. So it’s based off of very sophisticated taxonomies based upon external traits rather than an internal genetic code.

So my question here is basically, what is the finest level of detail one can find using just optics with no electronic enhancement?

Also, how could I convey an understanding of genetics without actually resorting to them having access to the genetic code?

2

The generally accepted lower limit of resolution of an optical microscope is 200 nanometers, which is around the size of bacteria. They would show up as dots or rods, but no other detail would be visible.

Geneticists had been working for a long time without having access to the genetic code. Your society would certainly know about genes and alleles, dominance and recessiveness, cells and chromosomes. One doesn’t even need computers to find out the composition of the genetic material and hence the genetic code; that was worked out here on this earth using chemistry. Doing the chemistry, however, may be difficult without combustion. [However, I question whether any kind of civilization would be possible without access to fire.]

3

I like that the first responder to my thread is someone by the name of Terminus Est. :wink: Gene Wolfe is one of the most inspirational writers in getting me to actually write.

Thanks. That helps.

Well of course they have fire. I misspoke. I mean they don’t use combustion to power vehicles and heavy machinery and the like. No combustion engines basically or if they exist they are quite rare and specialized, no mass production.

Another question I have, is regarding language. I want to portray that the language the main character speaks has little in common with English. There are certain concepts I am simply eliminating from his vocabulary, but also there is a level where I am just glossing over that it’s a completely different language and allowing him to use common terms that we recognize. I don’t want to give too much to the language, particularly since I am not quite so adept with ancient languages in the Gene Wolfe or Tolkien vein. So I am having him speak in plain English, but I hope to portray subtly that he is not speaking English at all without having to resort to inventing my own language (Tolkien) or using archaic terms (Wolfe).

4

A big problem here is that the farmers will need modern tools and methods to feed the cities. How else do you feed the cities?

5

Not gonna work. Any high tech society (of humans or humanlike creatures) is going to explore that geography to see what’s on the other side. There might be wonderful resources there, or there might be a great danger. The society cannot ignore either possibility.

Think back to the great explorers. They went looking for treasure and new lands to conquer. And they did that with sailing ships.

Also, as Quartz points out, it’s impossible to feed a high tech, highly specialized society with primitive tools and techniques.

If you’re only writing this novel for yourself, knock yourself out. But if you want it to be publishable, you’re going to have to rework it. Unless you plan on selling it to the SyFy (or whatever it is) channel for a show. They don’t care about plausibility, and will be happy to take something that the author calls sci fi.

6

Cities are not metropolises like New York and Tokyo for one. People’s consumption is limited by their role in life. A lot more farmers per capita than today’s society, those sorts of things.

7

Unless you are a master of language–keep it simple.

8

The top tier of society KNOWS what’s there. At the top of the society they have spacefaring tech.

Right. The separation isn’t caused by oceans, it’s by something far more severe than mere oceans.

Well the techniques are not primitive. Think modern permaculture techniques perfected to a high degree. They just aren’t using trucks and tractors or tools made of plastic. They would know how to maximize the nutrient yields of soil and use hydroponics for instance. The society is highly regimented based on the access to technology.

Wow, with the tiny amount of information I gave you, you already came to this conclusion huh? But as it is I am going to write the thing and concern myself with publication after it’s written. There are many reasons it might be hard to publish, but these concerns are not touching on them. Also the society you have the most problem with is not where any of the action takes place, so really it’s just background info on the protagonist. I don’t need to come up with a believable society and explain how it works because I’m not ever going to explain how it works. But to be fair keep in mind that the society isn’t separated by economic class, it is separated by job, so the farmers don’t need to support a society with a lot of conspicuous consumption like we have in our society.

9

Regarding the genetics, you’d have about what we knew back in the 1940s. They knew about chromosomes, they knew genes were on chromosomes, but they didn’t know what genes were, or what they were made of. They knew the chromosomes were mostly composed of protein, so they thought that genes were probably composed of protein and didn’t know what DNA was. If your society is simpler than that they might not even know what protein is. But with optical microscopes they could see cell nuclei and chromosomes and figure out cell division and such.

If they’ve been doing genetics for a long time they will understand classical Mendelian genetics very well. Even though they were contemporaries, Darwin didn’t know of Mendel’s work, which went unrecognized for years. The biggest problem evolutionists of the time had was explaining why novel features didn’t get washed away by sexual reproduction. They thought inheritance was blended, not particulate. But Mendel’s experiments could have been done at any technology level, they involved crossing different plant strains and recording the results. It could have been done by the Romans or Greeks.

10

That’s what I am trying to do, but I am trying to figure out an idiosyncratic voice so it’s clear that the character is speaking a different language.

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Interesting thanks. I’m going to have to study up on genetics myself to understand what I am trying to get at. That definitely helps put things into perspective because that is about the level I was going for. Given the limitations of 1940s genetic understanding what sort of application or art might that lead to the capability of? If they had that level of understanding for several hundred years might it lead to a much better understanding of cross-breeding and feeding nutrients to plants in order to get certain effects?

12

I would think that they’d be a bit more advanced than this, possibly reaching the level of 1980’s recombinant DNA technology. At the molecular level, biology becomes chemistry and you can do quite a lot of chemistry without the need for electronics and computers. In our world, DNA was discovered in 1869. DNA was rather convincingly demonstrated to be the genetic material in 1944. Once you’ve got that, you can keep on doing your chemistry until you’ve worked out the nature of the genetic code. You can certainly sequence single genes and manipulate them. Computers only become necessary for whole genome sequencing and gene alignments.

13

Interesting. The process in this case would be much slower happening over hundreds of years. Also, a bit more info, there are immortals, not in that they are people who don’t die, just people who’ve lived a good bit longer than the average, so imagine if Gregor Mendel had like 150 years to study his ideas, or at the very least someone else took it and ran with it for that long.

14

In Harry Harrison’s “Eden” series (which starts with West of Eden), the intelligent dinosaur civilization that exists side by side with humans has a completely non-tech culture which nevertheless knows about genetics and can manipulate genes. They don’t have or use fire. Harrison simply doesn’t address the issue of how they know what they know, or can do what they do. If he can get away with it, I’m sure you can, too.

15

Well I might not fully explain how they know what they know, but I’d at least like to try and know to a certain degree myself. There is an explanation to some degree for how they know what they know that will be revealed, but they still have to be able to use their knowledge within the technological limitations that they live under.

16

I think you’re biting off more than you can chew, and you may get so bogged down in the technological minutia that you overlook the story.

So cutting through all this: what story do you want to tell?

Remember, one of the major concepts of good science fiction writing is “edges of ideas.”

Now, this sort of background might be useful to you, but I would keep the details to a minimum. Otherwise, your novel will suffer from this:

For instance, the correct answer to your question, “what is the finest level of detail one can find using just optics with no electronic enhancement?” in a science fiction context is that “the equipment can do what it has to do for the story.” It doesn’t matter what resolution it has – no one will seriously care. All you have to do is have them look into whatever device you choose and have them discover what they need to discover.

This is how it works in real life. If, in a lab, someone were to discover something about the human genome, he’s not going to say, “Hey, look what I discovered in my 200 nanometer microscope, which uses light ways to magnify!” They will say, “Hey, look at this!” And someone will look and see whatever you want them to see. The details are completely irrelevant (and only make for bad writing).

As for genetics without knowing the genetic code, that’s trivial. Mendel did it with peas.* We knew about genetics without knowing the genetic code simply by watching how traits were passed on. Maybe we didn’t know the mechanism, but we could see the result.

As for what form of communications transcend culture – first question is how does that matter to the story? It’s pretty easy to come up with some reasonable examples – gestures, for instance. If you point to something and say its name, that will pretty much allow two differing cultures to begin communications (and there are plenty of examples, as European explorers met other groups). People can communicate with gestures pretty well, and can use that to understand each other’s languages in a very short time.

I’d suggest you give a look to the Turkey City Lexicon, the best guide ever to handling the science and details of science fiction. If you avoid the bad things, and stick to the good things, you’ll be in great shape.

But rule number one in science fiction (and any fiction): what’s important is the characters and the story. The science is only set design. It’s nice to make it work, but the audience doesn’t have to know that, behind the glossy paint, the set of the starship is made out of wood.

*Admittedly, he made mistakes, but he got the basic idea.

17

I’m actually not worried about it as the protagonist is an alien to the environment and doesn’t need to know everything, I just need to have a basic idea of what kinds of techs I can believably put in the story without going overboard. I’m really not concerned about that. I am focusing on it in this thread, it doesn’t mean it’s my primary focus in writing the story.

I know what story I want to tell this thread for me is more concerned with fleshing out the setting.

Basically the reason I want to know these things is I want to know if there is an inter-stellar drive, how it works precisely is irrelevant.

Yea, well, I want to know for myself. Part of it is that I want to give some attention to that detail. I’m not concerned about the info-dump as that’s not even very likely based upon the way I have already begun writing the story. For instance the main technology that has come into play is a woman’s cosmetics. To the protagonists they are just pretty smelling potions of some kind used for various things. He recognizes soap when it’s used to bathe him because he knows what soap is, he recognizes scented oils, but he doesn’t even know the plant species so he is completely without reference other than they are flowery scented oils. So that’s how they are presented, as flowery scented oils. As the flora will be unique, I will eventually talk about say, ‘oil of mangananthus’, and how it’s smell is bittersweet. Since the reader has no idea what mangananthus is I do not have to explain it.

Sure, I understand that. I appreciate your help, and it definitely is useful, but there is a bit of a level of telling me things I already know about story-telling, assuming that I am going to make these rookie mistakes.

Right, and I was just wondering how granular the process might be. Because the technology is based almost entirely off of hybridization of species.

Sure, that’s an easy one. That’s why I referenced Paul Ekman’s work on microexpressions. It’s extremely relevant to the story because the Protagonist will not meet a single person in his travels who speaks his language. So all of his communications are going to be nonverbal at first. One of the more interesting things about all that is the often hilarious but just as often tragic miscommunications that occurred when the European explorers met natives in the colonies. A good book on the subject is, “Missionary Conquest”, by George Tinker. The protagonist is specifically trained to be able to understand non-verbal communication well and quickly. That will be handled not by him describing his training in exhaustive detail but in his asides to himself where he begins to understand why something he was taught is useful.

Thanks for that tip, I’ll bookmark it.

Yes, my wife works for a company that teaches major brands some basic aspects of storytelling as it relates to brands that you would recognize in your everyday experience. Major video game franchises, blockbuster films, and soft drinks. I do some freelance work for them from time to time and her boss is a good friend of mine going back years, I’ve learned a lot about basic storytelling from him.

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I’m reading the Turkey City page. Quite interesting stuff. The traps I fall into more are ‘said’ bookism, Roget’s disease and Brenda Starr dialogue.

19

Fucking hilarious. Here are my favorites.

The Cozy Catastrophe

Story in which horrific events are overwhelming the entirety of human civilization, but the action concentrates on a small group of tidy, middle-class, white Anglo- Saxon protagonists. The essence of the cozy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off. (Attr. Brian Aldiss)

Dennis Hopper Syndrome

A story based on some arcane bit of science or folklore, which noodles around producing random weirdness. Then a loony character-actor (usually best played by Dennis Hopper) barges into the story and baldly tells the protagonist what’s going on by explaining the underlying mystery in a long bug-eyed rant. (Attr. Howard Waldrop

Just-Like Fallacy

SF story which thinly adapts the trappings of a standard pulp adventure setting. The spaceship is “just like” an Atlantic steamer, down to the Scottish engineer in the hold. A colony planet is “just like” Arizona except for two moons in the sky. “Space Westerns” and futuristic hard-boiled detective stories have been especially common versions

The “Poor Me” Story

Autobiographical piece in which the male viewpoint character complains that he is ugly and can’t get laid. (Attr. Kate Wilhelm)

AM/FM

Engineer’s term distinguishing the inevitable clunky real-world faultiness of “Actual Machines” from the power-fantasy techno-dreams of "Fucking Magic

20

Just a thought—are these guys supposed to be human, or just a humanlike alien species?

If it’s the latter, and you at least make it clear in the text (“Thad checked the glow at the horizon—his inner lids quivered at the edges of his eyes, but didn’t extend. Some time before sunup, yet.”) the readers should more readily accept that it’s being “translated” for them without a lot of explanation.

If they’re actually homo sapiens, though, that’s a bit of a pickle. Maybe you could subtly make reference by the narrator or in the descriptive text to someone messing with their pronouns (maybe they’re joking around, or slyly insulting someone, or they’re drunk, or something. I dunno.).