To clarify further, I feel like we’ve all read a sci-fi book where the character is like “I heard the nexuscaster ringing and went over to pick it up. The photon-carbon beams light up and Philips face appeared before me”. We can pretty much tell the guy means his phone rang and he went over and had a zoom call. But I’ve also ran into some books where it just feels like the author be saying shit.
Where do you think this transition lies? Because I was thinking at first it’s not too much if it’s just a futuristic fascinating way to describe something we already have, like a zoom call, but then I realized I’ve enjoyed books where the technology itself is completely unrealistic (in the sense of our current understanding of physics and technology), but I don’t care.
Is it just up to the skill of the other to explain it through context? eg; the saganbeam frictated and made its usual rabluxle as Carl appeared before me, shaking off the effects of the nanogaps. “Never gets easier being disassembled and reassembled atom by atom doesn’t it?” He said.
vs.
I plugged my hi-beam into the gryphonsphere and Darth immediately plyogenerated to my right. One step into the skellscalater and we were backporting to Tau Ceti.
I feel like I’ve read some books like the latter that after a while I’m just like…this author is just making shit up and I’m supposed to like draw my own conclusions as to what he means, but it’s just surface level plot happenings and not even metaphorical. Why am I even reading this?
Thoughts?
by heyheyitsandre