# 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:** 3
**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, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/41 "2013-05-01T13:14:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 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! But that’s not a “flying car” unless you live in one of those developments with adjacent runways and 100-foot streets. I concede it fills the niche in a very limited way, though. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/42 "2013-05-01T13:47:37Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > My favourite example of this is the “3 megabytes of hot RAM” in Neuromancer. Or the “hundreds of megabytes” Johnny Mnemonic had to implant in his head so he could courier it to wherever. Was there something wrong with using an encrypted thumb drive? Or sending it via an SFTP server? Heck it’s the future. A couple hundred megabytes would probably be a medium sized email attachment. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/43 "2013-05-01T13:55:08Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > But, you know, it’s the third dimension and absence of friction for braking that make flying cars impractical. That never seemed to trouble Luke Skywalker. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/44 "2013-05-01T13:59:49Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > 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. What is meant by “flying car” is a flying machine that you can operate like you drive a car, i.e., without an airplane pilot’s expertise and without a lot of pre-flight equipment checks; you just hop in the driver’s seat, find a place on the dash for your coffee, and up and away into the rush-hour-commuter-traffic-stream you go. Which is not entirely plausible, given advances in computerization. That such a machine could be as cheap-and-therefore-ubiquitous as ground vehicles, however . . . now we’re on the borderlands between hard SF and fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/45 "2013-05-01T14:03:56Z")
A hover car (“landspeeder”) isn’t flying; it isn’t traveling in three dimensions. It does require other than friction braking. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/46 "2013-05-01T14:20:13Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > 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. You ever read [Jack McDevitt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_McDevitt)? He’s not the greatest scifi author, but he’s head and shoulders of above most of 'em, and I don’t think he gets enough credit. And, well, reading what you have wrote - I think you would be a big fan. You have four bullet points, I"ll try to address all them all, but I’m folding your second into number 3. 1.)In the _Academy_ series (the first book is _The Engines of God_) the engines are talked about, obviously, but it’s really nothing more to the story than humanity can get from A to B. B is a long way away. Later in the series, the engines are changed and upgraded, but it’s a normal upgrade. The characters didn’t invent the new upgrades. Hell, they’re anthropologists. 2.)The beauty of the series is that people are always the same. There are no massive social changes in McDevitt’s novels. The novels are written in first person from the pilot’s point of view. Hutch is just doing her job, and that is the thing here. McDevitt writes female characters really well. I’m not talking about feminism; Hutch is a character that loves to pilot interstellar craft, and though she’s had to sacrifice would be romantic relationships back home, she’s alright with it. She is the hired captain of the ship. She’s used to being gone for 18 months at a time. Call it a “tour of duty”. That’s no different from anybody throughout all of history who’s personality makes them go on long, long trips. 3)I digressed a bit, but let me get back to the “future”. The “Academy” isn’t some monolithic organization. It’s an academic organization trying to do archeological and anthropological work. Because Jack Mcdevitt knows time, and this writer postulates that when we get to the stars, and we make first contact, we will only see the remains of a long, _long_ dead civilization. A long dead civilization that we don’t have the simplest clue about. There’s no damn Rosetta Stone. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/47 "2013-05-01T14:21:24Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > A hover car (“landspeeder”) isn’t flying; it isn’t traveling in three dimensions. After you bullseye a womp rat on the way home, what happens when you pull into your driveway and put it in park and turn it off before grabbing a blue milk? ---
**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, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/48 "2013-05-01T14:23:55Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > There’s no damn Rosetta Stone. Ever read HBP’s “Omnilingual”? Besides being a very fresh, modern and believable take on future events, written in the early 1960s, it solves the Rosetta Stone problem in a very likely manner. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/49 "2013-05-01T14:35:35Z")
In the 2076 world of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, computer graphics had not been invented until the AI, who spontaneously awakened when the Moon’s concentration of computer circuitry grew dense enough, creates video images. To create these images requires millions of calculations per second (i.e., a megahertz of computing power), and to attain this computing power, the AI has to suck up all the computing power on the Moon. To wit: the consciousness of an AI requires less computing power than would a dancing baby video. > [@tellyworth](#): > > My favourite example of this is the “3 megabytes of hot RAM” in Neuromancer. If memory serves, Gibson has said that he is (or at least was at the time) entirely computer-illiterate. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Yeah! Why doesn’t he just gobble some Spice or ask the ship’s Mentat? That’s actually a good example. Herbert avoided zeerust (or at least lampshaded it) by postulating a collapse of civilization (the Butlerian Jihad) between the present and the time in the novel. David Feintuch’s stories of Horatio Hornblower In Space do the same thing (as do the cavemen in “B.C.”). ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/50 "2013-05-01T14:46:18Z")
How many times do we see a three car pileup on the highway that was happened because a car stalled and the driver behind didn’t react in time? Imagine stalling in midair. Plummeting through the lower lanes of traffic and impacting not just the ground but possibly other flying motorists. Until we can automate ground traffic, I don’t think we should even think about ‘flying cars’ as defined upstream. Private flying should be left to the well-trained private pilots. But even those folks would have a time handling the close formation flight patterns needed to support hundreds of thousands of commuters in rush hour. Even the best fail at this at times. I am reminded of a Blue Angel accident during an air show. But, a hover car? More realistic though it presumes the antigravity field generators. But, one must assume the same would be true of the proposed flying car. Hmmm… I guess the best way is to never mention the ‘how’ of these gizmos. Just the ‘what’ as in ‘what do they do?’ The details can always be filled in later if needed for the plot but in general over-explaining things is not as good of an idea as it would seem to a budding SF writer. ---
**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, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/51 "2013-05-01T14:55:07Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > In the 2076 world of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, computer graphics had not been invented until the AI, who spontaneously awakened when the Moon’s concentration of computer circuitry grew dense enough, creates video images. In most golden-age and 1950s sf, robots and computers can accept complex voice instructions but are unable to synthesize a voice. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/52 "2013-05-01T15:07:06Z")
We technically do have flying cars already–they’re called “light aircraft” (i.e. Cessna’s and helicopters). They’re still too expensive for the Average Joe to own and too complicated to learn how to operate (not to mention all of the infrastructure you need for planes and helicopters), but who knows what’ll happen in a few more generations? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/53 "2013-05-01T16:47:38Z")
> [@dotchan](#): > > We technically do have flying cars already–they’re called “light aircraft” (i.e. Cessna’s and helicopters). They’re still too expensive for the Average Joe to own and too complicated to learn how to operate (not to mention all of the infrastructure you need for planes and helicopters), but who knows what’ll happen in a few more generations? Personal aerial vehicles would almost certainly have to be entirely under the control of an automated traffic system. You’d ride in them but you wouldn’t fly them. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/54 "2013-05-01T17:15:59Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Personal aerial vehicles would almost certainly have to be entirely under the control of an automated traffic system. You’d ride in them but you wouldn’t fly them. Why not? George Jetson does. ---
**Author:** ![artemis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/91b2a8/32.png) [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/55 "2013-05-01T17:21:05Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > 2.)The beauty of the series is that people are always the same. There are no massive social changes in McDevitt’s novels. That’s actually a superb way to insure your stories will date badly. We may not notice that people supposedly living in the 26th Century are behaving exactly like early 21st Century Westerners, but future generations sure will! ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/56 "2013-05-01T17:33:40Z")
Write like Frank Herbert. That’s your tip. I read Dune for the first time 2 years ago and didn’t notice a single fleck of zeerust. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/57 "2013-05-01T17:34:53Z")
Don’t extrapolate current brand names into the far future, unless that’s the POINT of the story. One of the most jarring things about _Babylon 5_ to me (watching for the first time in the 2000s) was that goddamn Zima sign in the bar… ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/58 "2013-05-01T17:36:04Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Don’t extrapolate current brand names into the far future, unless that’s the POINT of the story. One of the most jarring things about _Babylon 5_ to me (watching for the first time in the 2000s) was that goddamn Zima sign in the bar… That was in fact a deliberate, knowing joke. They put that in to make fun of exactly this trope. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/59 "2013-05-01T17:45:11Z")
> [@AndrewL](#): > > That was in fact a deliberate, knowing joke. They put that in to make fun of exactly this trope. Well, duh on me, then. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084/60 "2013-05-01T19:24:19Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Also there’s those pesky times when the flight path intersects the surface of the Earth, causing a rather abrupt lithobraking situation. Damn skippy. It’s not the fall that kills you… it’s the abrupt stop at the end. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tips-for-scifi-on-avoiding-zeerust/657084.md?page=4)