TEDx talk at NITK Surathkal: video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogFSI9cPZiU.

1. How ‘hard science fiction’ novels
get written
Tim Poston

2. How ‘hard science fiction’ novels
get written
Like other novels – characterisation, drama etc., –
but with something extra.
I’ll talk about what is specific to hard SF.

3. How ‘hard science fiction’ novels
get written
one
o

4. How ‘hard science fiction’ novels
get written
one
o
"Classic science fiction: a startling and
original premise, a character-driven plot
exploring that premise with great
imagination and ingenuity... Recalls
Niven at his best — with better science."
Stephen Baxter
So this is a representative of hard SF.
Let’s see how it was written.

5. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:

6. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production

7. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?

8. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?
• if your wife is copied, which is your wife?
?

9. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?
• if your wife is copied, which is your wife?
• who owns the house? has the job?

10. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?
• if your wife is copied, which is your wife?
• who owns the house? has the job?
• most property becomes IP

11. Begin with that ‘startling and original premise’.
I won’t tell you what it is, because ‘spoilers’ – just what’s in the blurb.
But consider a less startling, less original premise,
(with a lot of life left in it), and how to explore it.
Matter duplicators — that copy everything, including people.
These would have all kinds of implications:
• no more mass production
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?
• if your wife is copied, which is your wife?
• who owns the house? has the job?
• most property becomes IP
fascinating to explore.
But hard science fiction demands consistency.

12. Hard science fiction demands consistency.
Matter duplicators require some radically new physics.
That’s OK as a premise, but …
If the new physics can do that,
it can completely control* e = mc2.
*Or the book needs an explanation of why it can’t.
Spacecraft
close to c.
Synthetic planets
Planet busters
It enables Almost unlimited energy!

13. which could be a grand book:
but it would make exploration of the human aspects
• no more mass production.
• can a company copy star employees, fire the rest?
• if your mother is copied, which is your mother?
• who owns the house? has the job?
• most property becomes IP.
harder to explore.
How to focus on that?
Humans get a limited version from outside –
and can’t explore the planet-busting implications.

14. Humans get a limited version from outside –
and can’t explore the planet-busting implications.
How to do that?
Colony Vessel crash lands,
• technology drops to 18th Century or so (no electronics)
• colonists discover [duplicators] locally.syntei
But not from local intelligent aliens:
• human-alien contact not where we want to focus;
• how come the aliens don’t have planet-busters, etc.?
Same problem!
From local un-intelligent aliens: plants!

15. From local un-intelligent aliens: plants!
About two billion years ago,
a combination of mutations gave plants ‘syntei’.
Evolution led to huge variety (and symbiotic animals).
The humans land, discover this, and ‘syntelic’ technology –
for which they have no theory –
replaces the Earth science/tech they lost.
It takes them generations to explore the possibilities:
in one book, it’s hard to make that the plot.
So: 2,000 years later, a group of six Starfolk also crash,
and explore the society the first humans have made.

16. 2,000 years later, six Starfolk crash.
Their first view
of the planet. They detect
that one of
these sites
has a rescue
beacon.
They pick the
wrong one, so we
experience a lot
of the planet.
Heroes try to get home: an SF trope since at least The Odyssey (~700BCE).

17. 2,000 years later, a group of six Starfolk also crash,
and explore the society the first humans have made.
But how did they get there?
Not at sublight speed, or they wouldn’t hope to get home.
Standard faster-than-light drives in SF ignore Relativity*:
absolute simultaneity does not, does not, does not exist!
*So does a lot of Quantum Mechanics, which is why current physics is so far from Final.
Casual device of wormholes / jump drives ⇒ time travel.
Not what this book wants to explore.
One author wrote a book on Special/General Relativity 40 years ago
(still in print), so scientific/hard-SF conscience demanded better.

18. Solution: a ‘k-field’ increasing everywhere, according to all observers.
Jumps are only possible between spacetime points with equal k-value.

19. Solution: a ‘k-field’ increasing everywhere, according to all observers.
Jumps are only possible between spacetime points with equal k-value.
But it increases faster (according to local-matter observers)
where local matter is denser.
This would allow jumps to points
in your own sub-c-travel past.
Simultaneity quake!
Important to the Starfolk culture,
background in The Living Labyrinth,
and plot-pivotal in the sequel.
Nature doesn’t like that…

20. 2,000 years later, a group of six Starfolk also crash,
and explore the society the first humans have made.
So that’s how they get there.
And they see mysteries from orbit, before crash-landing.
People all over – but no ships or planes.
Turns out the difference between
shallows (shelf) and abyss is vital for
the history of human settlement.
We had to work out the marine geology.

21. We had to work out the marine geology.
We needed a narrow abyss here.
That implied a subduction zone, one tectonic plate sliding under another.
That meant a volcanic arc on this coast.

22. But our first map of that
continent looked like this:
No volcanoes!
More geologically consistent,
we changed to this.
For this book, we moved mountains!

23. • Transport
Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on

24. • Transport
• Ecology
Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on

25. • Transport
• Ecology
• War
Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on

26. • Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on

27. Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on
• Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
• Cooking

28. Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on
• Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
• Cooking
• Religion

29. Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on
• Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
• Cooking
• Religion
• Medicine

30. Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on
• Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
• Cooking
• Religion
• Medicine
• Entertainment

31. Spoiler anxiety (and time!) prevents talking about synte effects on
• Transport
• Ecology
• War
• Sex
• Cooking
• Religion
• Medicine
• Entertainment
• Engineering
• …
but the authors argued our way through these in massive detail.
(We are still sure we made mistakes, which you are invited to find.)
This process is typical of ‘hard’ SF – the book is not special that way.

32. This process is typical of ‘hard’ SF.
It is why this specific genre has so many more co-authored books
than crime fiction, romance, chick-lit, literary-fic, etc.
Creating a world is easier for two, like creating a person.

33. Creating a world is easier for two, like creating a person.
In fact, we created more than a world.
We created a society of worlds…
in which syntei are very, very disruptive.
In the sequel
Rock Star
we do get to planet-busters.

34. Thank you
See syntei.com for
more background
fan art
fan fic
fan science
fangineering
Forum, etc.