Jason LaPier is the author of Unexpected Rain and Unclear Skies (Books 1 and 2 of The Dome Trilogy). In his guest post he talks about Technology Choices in Worldbuilding.
When a storyteller is building a new world, there are a number of things to consider: social, political, and economic systems; geological and ecological conditions; mythological, religious, and philosophical influences; and so on. One key consideration, particularly in science fiction and fantasy, is technology and its impact on the imagined world.
In many ways, technology is an enabler, but in other ways, the technology levels defined in a world are a limiting factor. For example, shipbuilding may enable passage across seas, but distinct lack of air-traveling vehicles removes the possibility of faster travel across unpassable terrain (unless of course it is supplanted by an equivalent enabling technology). Technology can define boundaries between what is possible and what is not, what is easy and what is hard, what is helpful and what is harmful.
It’s tempting to get carried away with technology, especially in sci-fi. Since the beginning of the genre, we have come up with so many ways in which fictional tech will help us cross barriers and limitations in the future – whether near or far. We’ve also imagined how those same enabling technologies could be detrimental, how they could go horribly wrong. Sometimes the shortcomings become obvious in their consequences – e.g. AI enslaves the human race – and other times the effect is much subtler – e.g. AI is used to predict human behavior, and such information is not inherently malicious, but could be used to manipulate. And sometimes technology changes human life drastically, in ways that are not arguably good or bad, but perhaps inevitable.
All of these things have to be considered by the sci-fi storyteller. Fortunately, we have a treasure trove of tropes to draw upon, and it’s up to us what to use and how, and what to invent (or reinvent, as is often the case). For context, “The Dome Trilogy”, takes place about six hundred years in the future; as I run through this list, I’ll comment on how or what I’ve used in my own worldbuilding.
Space-flight
In a given fictional universe, is it possible? Is it difficult? If so, you’re probably expecting only one or two flights to occur in the story, for example in Andy Weir’s The Martian. If it’s relatively easy, how fast is it? Light speed? FTL (faster than light)? This is a trope given to us by popular science fiction, especially in film and TV: everyone knows the Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, and the Battlestar Galactica can travel faster than light, and by contrast, although Serenity and the other ships in the Firefly TV series travel easily around a single system, they never approach light speed.
This Writer’s Choice: If the scale of the story involves star-hopping, then there is plenty of precedent to go with it. What you give up is the general danger and difficulty of space travel as an obstacle (to a varying degree). “The Dome Trilogy” has some FTL travel within a small number of systems in the vicinity of our solar system, but most ships are not capable of those speeds. I’ve embraced the trope for the sake of the story, but at the cost of realism.
Communications Technology
In today’s world, we haven’t done better than radio or laser technology, limited by the speed of light. Science fiction often chooses to honor this limitation, for the effect that it can have on the tension of being unable to communicate so easily over vast distances. Again, The Martian sticks pretty closely to real-world science, so in the story there are massive delays in any communications between ground control, the ship, and the astronaut stranded on Mars. In Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, though FTL travel is enabled through special gates, communication in general is still limited by light speed, which leads to synchronization issues in hive-minds that are spread too distant. Ursula Le Guin coined the often-used ansible in her novels of the Hainish Cycle: a device that can communicate over interstellar distances. In television sci-fi, most communication is inexplicably instant, or at the very least glossed over (e.g. subspace radio in Star Trek).
This Writer’s Choice: If it’s only occasionally essential to the plot, impossibly instantaneous communications can be forgiven by readers and viewers: it’s what we’re used to in our day-to-day lives. But removing this limitation also removes any ability to exploit it as an obstacle in the course of a story. A lack of communication – or even slowing it down – can really ramp up tension. In “The Dome Trilogy”, most communication is limited to radio and laser, but there are special drones that can exceed light speed and are used to “mail” messages from one star system to another: a process that potentially takes days.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is a hot topic: as it improves in the real world, the sci-fi world has ramped up the questions of what the singularity will be like – the point when AI reaches and exceeds human intelligence. The most obvious trope is based in what some computer scientists fear may not be far off from the truth: that strong AI could wipe out or enslave humanity. But it doesn’t always have to be evil; if you go back to Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, most AI beings existed to serve humans. Asimov’s “Three Laws” continue to govern other helpful robots such as Star Trek’s Data. In a novel, AI tends to be much more complicated than simply shoving a conscious mind into an android. It may have the ability to manage and operate massively complex systems, conquering problems beyond our human capacities. Or it may integrate with human minds, enhancing them.
This Writer’s Choice: Doomsday AI has been done, but that’s not to say it can’t be done again, and as the real-world singularity approaches, this frightening possibility grows more and more relevant. One choice for sci-fi writers to consider in their worldbuilding is whether or not AI will achieve consciousness and/or free will. Some philosophize that without free will, AI could never be malicious – in these stories, look for AI to run behind the scenes, much as it does today, only better. In “The Dome Trilogy”, this type of narrow AI is so permeated throughout, no one thinks about it – it’s just taken for granted. It would be like wondering how cellphones work in today’s world. It never realizes consciousness, but it’s there in the background aiding engineers and scientists in solving the hardest problems. Meanwhile, there are a number of middle-class jobs that could potentially be replaced by AI but are not, for the sake of (somewhat cynically) maintaining a consumer-based economy.
Habitats of the Future/Off-world Colonization
Have humans left the Earth to establish habitats elsewhere? Are they living on the Moon, on Mars, on an exoplanet in a different solar system, or even on a spacecraft or space station of some kind? Terraforming is a popular sci-fi trope, where technology and science is used take an unlivable planet and make it Earth-like by changing the temperature, atmosphere, and so on. Alternatively, some stories use self-contained habitats – sometimes referred to as arcologies – rather than try to convert an entire planet into something Earth-like, or to even make a future Earth livable despite disastrous changes to the climate.
This Writer’s Choice: In the setting of “The Dome Trilogy”, humans have managed interstellar travel to a few closeby star systems and have set up a variety of habitats. Commonly referred to as “the domes” (you guessed it), they allow entire cities to survive on desolate exoplanets, resembling the self-contained megacities of Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel. Other planets or moons have naturally life-sustaining characteristics, where pioneers have established their own settlements. Their lives are much harsher and self-reliant than those of “the domers”, who by contrast are coddled by engineering and engage in rampant consumerism. As a side effect of the variance in filtration systems – natural and synthetic – skin pigmentation also varies in new ways, which introduces new levels of diversity and bias.
These are just a few key technology decisions that go into future-based science fiction. As you can see, there are times when the worldbuilder must choose when to take a shortcut and use a trope for the sake of the story and when to get inventive and give technology a new twist: either in its implementation, or in its effect. Or side-effect, as the case may be!
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Jason W. LaPier is a multi-genre writer, delving into science fiction, speculative fiction, horror, slipstream, literary fiction, and surrealism. Originally from Upstate NY, Jason now lives in Portland, OR with his wife and their dachshund. By day, he is a software engineer at Elemental Technologies, where he creates the kinds of virtual worlds that actually do something. He is always in search of the perfect Italian sandwich.
Serenity absolutely goes warp! That’s what the big ‘ole thing at the back does.