Science fiction

Science fiction often seems to us to be fantastical, but it is more difficult to find the logic and convince the reader of this fantastical imagination. Let's first analyze the main problem of this lecture. Unconstrained: That is, to use the author's maximum possible imagination. Self-consistent logic mainly refers to three aspects: the plot of the story does not produce contradictory places. The characters act in accordance with the general choices of the story situation. The contradictions and suspense of the story should be solved based on existing scientific knowledge, rather than resorting to supernatural forces.

In other words, our main exploration is how to achieve the imagination and the existing scientific system of clever chimera, how to limit the imagination in the reader does not create contradictions. In my opinion, if you want to achieve self-consistent story logic, the first thing to consider is time and space. Because no matter what kind of story the author wants to unfold, the first need to design and consider is a specific time and space. The laws laid down in the context of time and space will be the conditions under which all characters in the story must act.

So, what are the main narrative time and space commonly used in science fiction? According to the relationship between time and space and reality, I think it can be roughly divided into the following themes:

First, time travel. Authors NEED TO DESIGN AT LEAST TWO KINDS OF SPACE-TIME AND INVENT A TECHNICAL CONDITION FOR TIME TRAVEL THAT IS SELF-CONSISTENT WITH THE existing SYSTEM OF SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES. The theme of time travel can be traced back to Welles' The Time Machine. According to the standards of modern science fiction readers, the time machine designed by the hero in the novel is a relatively crude setting. Because the theory of relativity had not yet been published at the time of Welles's writing, in 1985, he was vague about how the time machine would work. But Wells's logic is self-consistent in that he provides a four-dimensional knowledge of the theoretical possibilities of this machine. That is, for the hero to explain to his audience that time, as the fourth dimension of space, can move in different directions. At that time, this knowledge was not common knowledge known by most people, so it had strong scientific expertise and appeared to be relatively advanced. This shows that if we want to increase the self-consistency of logic, the technical conditions we need to rely on in our writing had better not be scientific knowledge known to any ordinary reader, but something with a certain threshold of knowledge.

The second example of time travel is Arthur Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the end of the novel, the astronaut hero begins a magical journey through time due to the influence of the sacred stone. The stone may seem fanciful, but the authors set it as a "servant" left over from a highly developed alien civilization that has freed itself from matter by transforming itself into pure energy in a lattice of light. The stone is a test case for this alien civilization before it takes over the galaxy. Here, Clarke invokes the stone as an advanced civilization beyond human understanding, a setting that leaves him free to imagine how the stone would allow the protagonist to travel through time. This shows that it is a very useful self-consistent method for logic to transcend the existing scientific system and appeal to advanced civilization.

Second, the future society. If we are to create the society of the future, then we need to imagine technological progress along the existing system of scientific disciplines. Take Philip Dick's Do Bionic Men Dream of Electric Sheep for example. First, a reasonable picture of the world is needed. For example, as we explore Mars more and more deeply in decades or even centuries, the possibility of colonizing Mars becomes more and more likely. Thus the world can be designed according to the colonial relationship between the two planets. "Bionic Man" is designed in the Earth is affected by the apocalyptic war, the earth is deeply affected by radioactive dust, Earth people have to start a large-scale migration to Mars setting. At the same time, artificial intelligence, bionic man, robot is obviously according to the current trend of science and technology, in the future world will certainly appear. Therefore, if the novel is set in a future society, at least one of these three should appear. And now that we're out there, we need to think, are we going to design these artificial intelligence to follow the three laws of robotics? At the same time, with the appearance of these artificial machines, the novel should redistribute the labor force in the whole economic model. Obviously, all labor and physical work should no longer be done by human beings, but should be arranged to be done by these artificial intelligence. As technology gets more and more advanced, it will also have more and more control over people. For example, in the Bionic Man, there are emotional regulation machines. In a word, when artificial intelligence appears in novels, we need to constantly re-imagine how convenient it will be for human beings in such an era of artificial intelligence. Otherwise, the mismatch between technology and lifestyle becomes illogical.

Third, the real society. If our creation background is based on the current scientific level of the real society. In the world setting, the imaginary core of the story can be based on hypotheses that have not been empirically tested at the frontiers of science. For example, the third part of the Three-Body Problem builds the core of imagination on the impact of high-dimensional space civilization on low-dimensional civilization. The multi-dimensional civilization on which Liu is based is currently hypothesized to be at the frontier of physics. Although scientists have been able to describe high-dimensional space based on theories such as Riemann geometry, we have not found empirical evidence in real astronomical data. Whether such a dimensionality reduction strike is possible, in other words, is only a theoretical deduction. This means that Liu not only ensures compliance with scientific laws and self-consistent logic, but also is free to imagine specific ways of dimensionality reduction. For example, he finally set a "paper" left by a high-dimensional civilization as a dimensionality reduction weapon. In this way, the weapons and dynamic processes of dimensionality reduction, as well as the experience and result of dimensionality reduction, become objects that can be freely imagined.

At the same time, we can also design an alien civilization with a completely different ecological environment, natural order and Earth. Like the three bodies of the three bodies. Due to the material basis and the law of nature is completely different from the earth, and the planet, alien civilization form body structure, life style, cultural psychology, social system, language can also be very different from the earth, the author can be in the unreasonable parts of the characters such as psychological attribution to the differences in the form of civilization. For example, in the novel, Liu Cixin designed the premise that the Trisolaran would not know how to lie before meeting the Earthman, thus ensuring Luo Ji's deterrent power as a sword holder.

Finally, I want to talk about some self-consistent rules that are universally applicable. For example: adding a first-person narrative. The nice thing about first-person narratives is that they depend very much on the mental and psychological state of the narrator. If the narrator's observation of a phenomenon turns out to be completely wrong, abnormal, and inconsistent, we can appeal to a nervous state of mind, a disorder of body perception, a mental illness, etc. For example, the coping mode of the same event is designed in different groups of the novel according to different political factions. This has the advantage of not having to design a complete and perfect explanation system, allowing for flaws and loopholes in every solution. In fact, due to the diversity of human culture, differentiate into different scheme which is the most close to reality, for example, in the face of three body destructive action of understanding will often because of culture, religion, such as knowledge structure, class differentiation, liu in the three body 1, designed the scientists in the face of three body for different political views and formation of the three factions. In Trisomy 2, there are four ways to deal with trisomy people. In addition, scientific terms, scientific knowledge points and expository language should be added to the novel. This will give the reader an emotional sense that your novel is hard. For example, Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy has scientific terms on almost every page, and this scientific term is not invented by the author himself, but with contemporary physics, biology, engineering, materials science, meteorology, geography, astronomy and so on. Finally, no matter what kind of time and space, the fundamental motivation of every act of life is to preserve itself as much as possible. Therefore, when designing novel characters or the motives of alien civilizations, constructions should be made from the perspectives of race reproduction, civilization preservation, eugenics and macroscopic life data as much as possible.

This lesson's imagination problem: a very classic science fiction imagination problem, if you are stuck in the same day, how to get out of the time loop? Looking forward to your answers.