# Tips for scifi on avoiding zeerust **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 30, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084 "2013-04-30T11:33:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/21 "2013-04-30T19:56:49Z")
Rustproof your Zee. ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/22 "2013-04-30T20:22:44Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > My favourite example of this is the “3 megabytes of hot RAM” in Neuromancer. Wasn’t that _Johnny Mnemonic_, where he had parts of his brain wiped to store “hundreds of megabytes”? ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/23 "2013-04-30T20:35:11Z")
Avoid giving actual dollar amounts. "I’ll give you back the moon for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!’ ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/24 "2013-04-30T23:10:28Z")
> [@Beastly\_Rotter](#): > > Wasn’t that _Johnny Mnemonic_, where he had parts of his brain wiped to store “hundreds of megabytes”? There probably was something like that in JM, but the three megabytes is in Neuromancer - Case has a buyer for it and it seems quite valuable. ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/25 "2013-04-30T23:39:24Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > There probably was something like that in JM, but the three megabytes is in Neuromancer - Case has a buyer for it and it seems quite valuable. Probably Ascii Porn. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/26 "2013-04-30T23:51:15Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > I will always love the moment in the Lensman book (one of the first ones - I forget) where the navigator whips out his slide rule to figure out the course to the next galaxy over. Yeah! Why doesn’t he just gobble some Spice or ask the ship’s Mentat? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/27 "2013-04-30T23:53:09Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > Avoid giving actual dollar amounts. > > "I’ll give you back the moon for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!’ Or, play with it. “Yes sir, that shirt will be 1.5 million Inflatobucks . . . No, sorry, 1.6 million, the currency dropped again while I was ringing you up . . .” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/28 "2013-04-30T23:54:51Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > My favourite example of this is the “3 megabytes of hot RAM” in Neuromancer. [Technology Marches On.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TechnologyMarchesOn) ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/29 "2013-04-30T23:56:08Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Zeerust is a term defined as concepts that looked futuristic when they were produced in fiction, but that to a modern audience seem old fashioned. > > Some examples would be women not being allowed in positions of power, or the USA and Soviet Union still in a cold war in 2185. > > My tip? Don’t ever give tech specs! R2D2 still seems futuristic because there aren’t droids wheeling around with his capabilities. But when Data from TNG is said to have an amazing memory capacity in terabytes, a capacity I could now purchase for a couple thousand dollars it dates the material. I’m pretty sure that TNG never made this mistake. They were well aware of this problem, and so their units were always undefined. Storage was always measured in “Quads,” so Data might have said he had X “Teraquads” of memory, but the size of a “Quad” was left to the viewer to determine. More information [here](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad). ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/30 "2013-05-01T02:47:56Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > I’m pretty sure that TNG never made this mistake. > They were well aware of this problem, and so their units were always undefined. > Storage was always measured in “Quads,” so Data might have said he had X “Teraquads” of memory, but the size of a “Quad” was left to the viewer to determine. > [@Memory Alpha](#): > > Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of eight hundred quadrillion bits and a total linear computational speed rated at sixty trillion operations per second. From [The Measure of a Man](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Measure_Of_A_Man_%28episode%29). Which, granted, was a Season 2 episode (i.e. “one of the bad seasons”). 😉 The “Quads” measurement itself caused a slight problem itself, though…when TNG used it, it was typically to describe data measured in the **kilo** quads. Voyager tended to up it to **Giga** and **Tera** quads, probably to sound closer to the increasing data sizes encountered by computer users. Or to sound cooler. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/31 "2013-05-01T05:03:19Z")
Anyways…y tips? •Unless the story is about how the machine works…_don’t explain how the machine works_. And if that _is_ the story, _don’t explain how the machine works!_ I kid, I kid. But really, unless the machine can be more-or-less built today, don’t go into the in-depth technical details. And even then it’s a probably a bad idea, if you’re assuming it’s going to remain unchanged forever. Using impossible/futuristic technology “black boxes” is fine, sure. But \*don’t pry open the black box[/I. Unless there are just _more black boxes_ inside. •When you’re writing the future, you’re writing a different time, not an _extension of_ your _own_ time, or your own time just with ray guns. •Expanding on the above…it’s really the little-big leaps in the underlying fundamentals of a future setting that really make it groundbreaking. It’s easy to predict a wealthy guy having robot butlers; it’s another thing to imagine a wealthy guy not _wanting_ butlers, or needing them. You can predict [using a home computer for shopping, correspondence, and banking, forty years ahead of your time](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=447748)…but it might be a harder leap to have it controlled by typing on a keyboard, like one of the _girls_ in the steno pool. You can predict a carburetor the size of kidney bean…but it’s something else to predict an internal combustion engine that doesn’t even _use_ one. •But really, most importantly…you can’t predict the future, not perfectly. It won’t work. Something will always come out of left field, or more people with bigger (or smaller) brains than you do will have a better grip on shaping it. Write how _a_ future _might_ be, if such-and-such happens/ed. Sometimes you’ll get close to the mark, or just lucky. And of course, there are _always_ exceptions…but people always think that _they’re_ the exception. 😉 So keep an introspective mind, and use your best judgement. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/32 "2013-05-01T07:53:30Z")
Forget flying cars. They are the most impractical and dangerous forms of transport you can imagine, and for that reason alone will never happen. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/33 "2013-05-01T10:01:24Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Forget flying cars. They are the most impractical and dangerous forms of transport you can imagine… :dubious: Flying cars? Most impractical and dangerous? Pshaw. Not even close. Imagine a giant glass hamster ball with a metal stick going through it at the center. Add wheels to the stick so it can only rotate on one axis. Hang a swinging seat from the stick. Then imagine the wheels being powered by a steam engine with a barely sub-critical mass of plutonium as the heat source. Oh. and the single seat inside has a cushion stuffed with cobras and funnel-web spiders. _Radioactive_ cobras and funnel-web spiders\*. And that’s not even in my top ten of imaginable dangerous forms of transportation. 😛 And I prefer my stories with zeerust. **Starman Jones** is _better_ for having instantaneous warp drive where you have to calculate the coordinates with log-tables and slide rules and then enter the numbers via a sort of adding-machine set-up. SF without zeerust is boring and sterile–like an Apple store. Vaguely slick and shiny looking but no texture or character. Set dates, use real measurements, take guesses about future trends and if you’re wrong, trust your readers to be able to accept that it’s an alternate future that never happened. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/34 "2013-05-01T10:12:21Z")
I think the best way to avoid zeerust is to make sure there are already deviations from even the present time (or even the past). This makes the world explicitly set in a different universe. That’s how steampunk works, for example. Or cyberpunk. Not explaining how things work also works to an extent, but it also makes for rather boring science in your fiction. Sure, some stories can pull it off, but many can’t. And often, even the fact that the device exists seems anachronistic 30 years later. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/35 "2013-05-01T10:59:45Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Imagine a giant glass hamster ball with a metal stick going through it at the center. Add wheels to the stick so it can only rotate on one axis. Hang a swinging seat from the stick. Then imagine the wheels being powered by a steam engine with a barely sub-critical mass of plutonium as the heat source. Oh. and the single seat inside has a cushion stuffed with cobras and funnel-web spiders. _Radioactive_ cobras and funnel-web spiders. I was limiting it to what people _actually include_ in science fiction works. Though I admit there have been a few more dangerous vehicles occasionally imagined than flying cars. Like rocket packs. And riding on the back of a manticore. But, you know, it’s the third dimension and absence of friction for braking that make flying cars impractical. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/36 "2013-05-01T11:10:36Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I was limiting it to what people _actually include_ in science fiction works. Though I admit there have been a few more dangerous vehicles occasionally imagined than flying cars. Like rocket packs. And riding on the back of a manticore. But, you know, it’s the third dimension and absence of friction for braking that make flying cars impractical. Also there’s those pesky times when the flight path intersects the surface of the Earth, causing a rather abrupt lithobraking situation. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/37 "2013-05-01T12:26:19Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > **Starman Jones** is _better_ for having instantaneous warp drive where you have to calculate the coordinates with log-tables and slide rules and then enter the numbers via a sort of adding-machine set-up. You’re welcome to explain to me just what the computer does in that book. To begin with, it does NOT: [ol] [li]Store any information. They have a quasi-secret library of books with all the ephemeris, logarithm etc. data in it.[/li][li]Perform any calculations. The astrogators wear themselves and their circular slide rules out doing it.[/li][li]Control the ship. Navigators fly the ship and control the jumps.[/li][/ol] So… exactly what do they do? (No one’s ever successfully explained it in 35+ years, so you needn’t actually waste time trying to answer.) But you’re right: it’s still a hell of a book and story, zeerusted right to the floor. My thought is that you could film it with minimal changes if computers didn’t survive the jumps and human calculators, with a little help, did it all. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/38 "2013-05-01T12:32:33Z")
The thing with flying cars is, they already exist, and have for about a century. They’re just not practical for private ownership by the average schmuck, is all. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/39 "2013-05-01T12:51:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The thing with flying cars is, they already exist, and have for about a century. They’re just not practical for private ownership by the average schmuck, is all. Or anyone, really. I don’t know of a single one ever actually built and driven/flown, one-off or intended production model, that is \*either \*a capable (and safe) aircraft or a roadworthy (or even legal) street car. I’d believe in James Bond’s submarine Lotus before I’d believe in a “real” flying car. Don’t get me started on Paul Moller. Don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/40 "2013-05-01T12:55:40Z")
I dunno, the Cessna seems pretty practical for a user with specialized training. Sure, it’s no good on a road, but why would it need to be? It can fly! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084.md?page=3)