The science in science fiction
You know what I love best about playing in a science fiction universe? You can forget all about the constraints and limitations of this one, and just invent your own shi stuff. You can nod politely at Einstein and ignore his decree that nothing can travel faster than light, and have your military space ships flashing through hyperspace like manic fireflies. Or have your soldiers use laser-guided photon blasters. Or have them wearing very nifty Shield suits that defy detection from all known sensor systems.
Believe me, it’s lovely to be able to thumb your nose at reality.
Well, to an extent. I don’t aim for realism in my writing—because it just isn’t realistic to have ships going faster than the speed of light, thanks to Einstein’s pesky limitations—but I do try and be *plausible*. So I’ve tossed those constraints out of the window only after a lot of research and consideration. I had to plan to get around them.
Let’s look at space travel as an example. Bottom line is that unless you come up with something that allows faster-then-light travel, your heroes are going nowhere, slowly. Keeping to Einstein’s rule allows you to do a lot on a slow, confined spaceship with character drama, for example, but you won’t get a lot of thrilling space action. I may be shallow, but I like my explosions and battles. I needed a way of getting Bennet and Flynn into action—military action, people, please!—and doing it fast.
I did some reading and research, because minds a LOT brighter than mine have already thought about f-t-l spaceships and several different ‘systems’ are floating about out there. Babylon 5’s jumpgates into hyperspace, or Star Trek’s warp engines, or Stargate’s wormholes. I’m not a research physicist, so coming up with something totally new would take probably years of research to be plausible, so I opted for a system that uses hyperspace—which is grandly described in the dictionaries as “(in science fiction) a notional space–time continuum in which it is possible to travel faster than light.”
Take the Gyrfalcon, the dreadnought at the heart of the Taking Shield series. In normal space, when moving in and out of star systems for instance, she uses sub-light engines that are fast, but not that fast. When she’s travelling between systems, she has faster-than-light capability that utilises dropping out of normal space, and into hyperspace. Scanning systems work in hyperspace and communications can be beamed through with you, both of which are mightily convenient! But hyperspace isn’t without its drawbacks. Ships can’t drop into hyperspace in an atmosphere or while they’re in the middle of a space battle (too much energy in flux)—that makes sure they just can’t jump away out of trouble. I mean, where would the drama be if they could all just scarper the minute the enemy shows up?
I tell you, any real scientist would be a gibbering idiot in the corner after reading this, but here’s the point. I’m not even going to set aside narrative space in the story for explaining how it works or how the ships navigate. That’s because I’m not writing a treatise on FTL travel or a handbook for role playing games. I’m not giving a physics lecture. I’m storytelling, and I don’t want to take up chunks of text with stuff that does not move the story along.
In the end, all that matters is the storytelling. A story doesn’t need to make realistic sense in this world, only in its own. What matters is one big question: what will make this story *work*?
I’ve done my best to answer it, in a way that makes Bennet and Flynn’s world authentic and consistent, even if a scientist would role their eyes and do that gibbering.
Do try Taking Shield and see if I’ve got it right. There’s a lot going on in those books, including the sort of action that has nothing to do with space travel or space battles… Because that’s the other wonderful thing about science fiction. There’s something for everyone.
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Cover Artist: Adrian Nicholas
Hate buying books in a series until the whole thing is done? Then check out the Rainbow Award-winning Taking Shield series, just released as an e-book boxed set. Not only do you get the entire series, there’s a very nice saving on the cost of the individual books! Anna’s dropped in today to tell us more.
About Taking Shield
Earth’s a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that’s dragged on for generations.
Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, uncovers crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the demands of his family's 'triple goddess' of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet’s relationships with lovers and family—his difficult relationship with his long term partner, Joss; his estrangement from his father, Caeden, the commander of Fleet's First Flotilla; and Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet’s main love interest.
Over the Taking Shield arc, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity’s enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some days he isn’t able to tell friend from foe. Some days he doubts everything, including himself, as he strives to ensure Albion’s victory. And some days he isn’t sure, any longer, what victory looks like.
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