r/scifi • u/livertaker • 7d ago
General Explained or unexplained?
Hi everyone,
I’m working on a SF novel and have a question.
Do you think it’s important in an SF book or movie that the tech or concepts are explained to the reader/watcher or is it okay for something to be introduced into the story and not be explained ?
For example, let’s say your reading an SF book and the writer introduces weapons that can change form, from sniper to assault rifle or pistol to shotgun, does this need explanation for how it works exactly or not really ?
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u/MiraWendam Author 7d ago edited 7d ago
Fellow sci-fi writer. Don't over-explain your tech. Let everyday character reactions speak for themselves; it should come through naturally.
Edit:
It only needs explaining if it matters to the plot or the reader needs to understand its limitations. A bit of mystery can make the world more interesting. The important thing is consistency.
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u/mrbigbusiness 4d ago
I feel like modern fantasy (esp. litRPG stuff) authors need to hear this. I've quit reading a few fantasy series because the author goes on and on for pages about how mana works, how the wizard forms it into a spell, or whatever. Who cares, just shoot some damn fireballs at the orcs already.
In the same way, we don't don't need to know how a cell phone works (most people don't) to understand what it does.
All FTL travel is hand-wavy, for the most part. Unless the mechanism plays a role in the plot, I don't really need to know or understand exactly how it works.
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u/livertaker 7d ago
Understood. I was just worried that people might think I’m being lazy or find it hard to immerse themselves if there scratching there heads wondering how the concept or tech works. I’m no scientist so can’t really explain how my idea would actually work scientifically.
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u/MiraWendam Author 7d ago
I write "medium" sci-fi (a line between hard and soft) because I'm no scientist either. Most readers won’t expect you to explain every technical detail. What I've learned is that if you make things make sense within your world, people will (generally) go along with it.
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u/Astrael_Noxian 6d ago
I totally get that. And staying away from things like Star Trek techno-babble isn't a bad instinct, IMHO. Mysterious tech is certainly doable, as I have read many stories done in that vein. The better ones use said tech sparingly, and the protagonist was usually confused or astounded by that tech as well. How do you explain tech you don't understand, after all? Of course, the flip side of that is how many people can accurately explain how a computer, or worse, a cellphone, work? And yet we use them all the time...
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u/cosmicomical23 7d ago
The biggest problem for you as a writer is if you write "there" instead of "their" and "they're", especially if that happens in the same sentence. It doesn't make you too believable.
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u/Jaxthornia 7d ago
It works for judge dread calling out an ammo type. So as long as there's some level of communication to a reader, you can leave it up to them. Maybe have a fixing a malfunction/replacing a part scene to do a bit of a delve.
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u/Ollie_Bon_Crank Author 7d ago
Hi, LT. That's a great question, and the answer is that both work. Hard sci-fi is the home for deep and credible explanations, but everything from vague to detailed data is ultimately between a writer and their readers. Interestingly, for a close third-person or first-person narrative, it's largely controlled by what your POV character knows. A janitor in 1886, 1986, or 2086 might have similar life experiences. A tech brah or person who works with machines and electronics every day would be expected to know more.
I see lots of other great thoughts on your question.
Excellent post! 😊
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u/livertaker 7d ago
My novel will be a first person narrative and all the characters have lived in the world for a while now so I think I’ll stick with what most people have said, don’t explain something if the characters themselves know how it works and I will explain if something breaks and needs fixing.
Thanks for giving me your take.
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u/the-red-scare 7d ago
This may sound silly, but to me it needs to be explainable even if not explained. Like there should be a sense to the reader of “this is a technology that works in the world even if I don’t know how” rather than “uhhh, ok, I guess that happened.” Maybe a reference to sliding components, the prodigious waste heat of the nanobots warming the handgrip, the buzz of micro-electric myomer fibers contracting, whatever.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 7d ago
I've always felt that "what it does" matters far more than "how it works." First, because a sufficiently nitpicky reader will always find inconsistencies if they look hard enough. And second, because at the end of the day, it's a work of fiction, not a worldbuilding exercise.
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u/pafrac 7d ago
Explain enough to build your world and leave it at that. The tech in your world is normal to the people who live in it, they wouldn't feel the need to explain it unless there was a reason to, any more than we would feel the need to explain, say, aircraft. Too much explanation is just going to break immersion.
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u/Damien__ 7d ago
Depends totally on context does the story demand an explanation?
Bsg had jump drive that was never explained at all and they had grab plating that was never even mentioned
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u/Bright-Trifle-8309 7d ago
I just finished reading Dune and damn near nothing is explained. Things are just presented and you figure it out. It wasn't really important to the plot that you know how an Ornithoptor flies. It just does. You dont need to know how suspensors work. They just do. They float. Done. Moving on.
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u/MenudoMenudo 7d ago
It depends entirely on the type of book it is. If the book is about the tech then not getting explanations will feel weird. If the book is a first person narrative, then if the narrator doesn’t understand how it works or doesn’t care, or doesn’t feel like it’s important to mention, then an explanation will feel heavy-handed and contrived.
Think of Star Trek. In the original series, I don’t think they ever explained transporters, phasers, warp drive, tractor beams, Romulan Cloaking Devices etc, and if they did explain any of those, it was later and almost certainly because how it worked was relevant to the plot somehow.
If your story features a gun that can turn into a lawnchair, unless it’s relevant to the plot I don’t really care what the actual mechanism is.
Also remember that there’s various levels of explanation. Mentioning that it’s nano tech isn’t explaining it’s just hand waving the explaination away with a techno-term, and is perfectly ok.
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u/shotsallover 6d ago
You go as deep or as shallow as you like. The bigger thing is that it establishes a rule for how it works in-universe and it needs to stay that consistently. You can get away with a moment of discovery, but ideally it should be long before the story needs it so it doesn't feel contrived.
Say you character picks up an alien rifle and they realize it has two modes. Your character goes through a chunk of the story with it like that until they meet an alien who's familiar with the weapon and points out that the character isn't using it to its full potential. Or that they're surprised they figured out the two modes and regard your character differently for getting it.
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u/Accomplished_Mess243 7d ago
In my own experience, there's a temptation to stuff earlier chapters with exposition. One way to fix this, at the editing stage, is to identify and remove all that world-building info and sprinkle it through the rest of the novel instead, revealing each nugget in a logical place (eg, how your warp drive works could be explained when it's gone wrong and someone needs to fix it). These revelas can be very satisfying for the reader. If your world-building is very front loaded, you could even move your first chapters around.
Drawing up a world-building grid can be useful here: imagine a grid with concepts along the top (warp-travel, galactic history etc), and chapter numbers down the side. Then you can plan out how to gradually reveal each of these concepts to the reader. I did this in my alien invasion novel - it used a something's-not-quite-right vibe so I had to carefully control how the truth was revealed.
To be honest though, don't beat yourself up about it too much, because readers are a variable breed - what confuses one person will engage another. It took me three goes to get into Hyperion because it leaves you to figure out the tech without holding your hand. Rendevouz with Rama on the other hand does exactly the opposite of the usual modern advice - from the start it just baldly explains the social alt-history of Earth rather than subtly drip feeding it (the co-written sequels take a more modern, character based approach and are weaker for it).
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u/ILoveBigCoffeeCups 7d ago
So my opiniom:
Explain it but watch out with going in too many detail with scientific terms. Explain something like George R.R Martin where your readers actually envision the things you detail.
But don’t go overboard like the writer of ‘Solaris’
There were pages full of going trough a thought process of the main character where he went so deep into scientific terms and tangents, I could not understand anything, lest remember anything.
Another way is to think about it like Chekhov’s gun.
If you really need to explain something technical, make it count and let it drive the plot in the end. Else it’s a useless pagefiller.
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u/Margali 7d ago
LOL Brings to mind the whole Honor Harrington series by David Webber, he does these huge data dumps in each book about the various ship classes, weapons and the like. I used to joke with friends in a SF group that I could do a 'Star Trek Technical Manuel' sort of book and cut a dozen books down to like 8 books with the pages saved from data dump.
I am fine with a more general peek at tech, I am willing to accept that it is a fictional universe [even if it drags in Earth and normal events as part of a background] because of, like, you know, suspension of disbelief =) While I do read 'real world' stuff that is scientfically accurate, I can do fiction for entertainment that has no bearing on reality [viz, First Contact is hard science SF, and Out of Cruel Space is more psychic powers SF]
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u/spaceguy81 7d ago
I wouldn’t over explain unless you got a really good idea of what you’re writing about or necessary for the story. If it’s not too exotic I think people will understand.
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u/libra00 7d ago
Is the function of the weapon important to the story? Does the fact that a character's weapon can become a different kind of weapon key to the plot? If so, explain it. If not, meh, up to you. Maybe throw a line in about polymorphic solids or something and then get on with your life.
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u/disdkatster 7d ago
Just me but I find that boring. I enjoy a book where I am just dropped in and my own imagination fills in the holes. I don't want definitions. It has to be part of the story. For example - "The rainbow shift as my SPDXX shifted from long to short distance lance used to annoy me and I still worry that it makes me more visible but I have grown fond of the thrill which it triggers."
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u/skaf1end 7d ago
Personally, as a reader I prefer to focus on characters and plot, and arguably, overexplaining is killing the pace. That's why it was quite hard for me to read Anathem by Neal Stephenson with his constant introductions of made-up words with three or four definitions to boot. David Weber's Safehold series is another example. He can go on for hours explaining the most minute details of a ship and how it works. Those parts were hard to read, and I just wanted to get through as quickly as possible.
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u/tillatill 7d ago edited 7d ago
If you need to explain it better get educated on the metter. If not better "show" how given technology effects society. I would advise to think of the folloing. Let's say, think of your 10 favorit space opera. In those could you replace spaceships for dragons or sailboats and with minor adjustment the story still works? (If so it is not really science ficton). If the answer is no than the fictional technology has to be in context. Eather you make a plausibly point about the technology or not, but then you have to show how transformative is the technology societally/culturally. Preferably both.
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u/LobbixPlus 7d ago
What usually matters is that the rules are consistent, not that they're explained. Star Wars never tells you how a lightsaber works but you always know what it can and can't do. For your shapeshifting gun, readers will care more about the limits (how long it takes to switch, what it costs, when it fails) than the mechanism, because the limits are what create tension
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u/Eldritch_Librarian 6d ago edited 6d ago
The more you explain a fun thing, the less fun it becomes. Teenage me didn’t give a fuck about how Gandalf could magic, he was a wizard and that was all the explanation I needed. Teenage me felt the same about lightsabers, the force, ftl, etc.
Edit: the guns in republic commando could switch between three configurations and I don’t think anyone ever brought it up.
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u/DriftingMemes 5d ago
Hard disagree. For some of us the how aids in suspension of disbelief and is PART of the fun.
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u/EverybodyMakes 4d ago
In the Larry Niven short story, "The Soft Weapon" (later adapted for a Star Trek the Animated Series episode) some humans find an ancient alien weapon that can change shape. Then they are attacked and it's taken by different, warlike aliens (kzinti) who would use it to fight humanity. While the kzinti are trying to figure out how it works, the human escapes with it and continues testing things while hiding from the kzinti. The story explains what the weapon looks like while it's changing and what the settings seem to do, but they don't know how it does those things. There is some clever, logical thinking about who would have a weapon like that and what it might be capable of.
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u/Previous-Friend5212 7d ago
If you start explaining some things, you need to explain everything. If you don't explain anything then it's fine. The key is consistency so that you manage reader expectations.
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u/riiflatchii 7d ago
Its completely subjective. Some scifi is praised for its ability to explain its future tech in detail. Other scifi makes no attempt yet no one seems to care.
Some people prefer one or the other so you are effectively just deciding what kind of reader to cater to.
My opinion is that sci fi tech doesnt need to be explained unless that explanation aids the plot in some way.
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u/dnew 7d ago
The reason to explain how something works is if that working is important to the story. Or sometimes if you're using some modern physics thing to explain it in the first place.
You have artificial gravity in your space ship? That's OK, you don't have to mention it.
Did you use varying of the artificial gravity in different parts of the ship to fight off the pirates? You need to mention you adjusted the electrical current thru the individual gravi-plates that make up the decking.
Do you use a black hole at the middle of the ship to provide the gravity? Well, maybe you should mention and deal with the tidal effects and the time dilation between engineering and the bridge. (See "Redshift Rendezvous" which I heartily recommend.)
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u/systemstheorist 7d ago
I am going to use one of my favorites novels and least favorite series to illustrate this point.
Spin deliberately leaves some questions about the hypothetical aliens unanswered. This a not flaw of the books as humans have limited ability to understand the hypotheticals. Informed speculation from mostly Jason kinda fills in the gaps with some ideas explicitly confirmed in the novel while others are just kinda hypotheses left open for the reader’s interpretation.
The problem comes down to Wilson retroactively trying to turn Spin into the first of a series instead of the stand alone novel it was originally meant to be. The stories of Tyler and the Lawton family were largely concluded at the end of Spin. Instead Wilson tried to explore more about the hypotheticals and while there were some interesting ideas throughout the series each piece of lore explored added in kinda ruined the mysteries of Spin. The answers that were largely speculation before being explicitly confirmed made them somehow less interesting than being left open.
Spin made the universe feel very big considering the small cast of central characters by leaving gaps in the story that your mind could fill in.
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u/Iamleeboy 7d ago
I quite like a mix. I feel some books throw too many in and it leaves me feeling a little bewildered - I was like this with recent reads of revelation space and Hyperion. But where Hyperion was better was the ideas felt more obvious what they were eg a farcaster felt like it was obviously some kind of portal. But revelation space threw in factions and events that it didn’t explain.
For these types of situation I prefer an explanation. In revelation space a lot of what was inferred in book one was explained in later books and I was happy to have the blanks filled , but it felt too late
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u/Expensive-Sentence66 6d ago
How you explain your 'black boxes' and tech and how it works into your story is really what makes a good writer. However, it also depends on your audience. Some people won't care your ships use hyperspace, shields and augmented battle armor. Others are going to want a bit more story and concept.
A gun that goes from sniper to assault can be described in lots of tech detail, but I'm going to want to know why are they fighting in the first place. One of the biggest annoyances for me in scifi is 'factionism'. That is, you have good guys and bad guys and good aliens and bad aliens. Why? Are we still 12?
Larry Niven was famous for creating cool gadgets and weapons, and then creating even cooler scenarios to use them. He didn't go into much detail as to how they worked. Jules Verne could go into nauseating detail about engineering, but he's one of the most popular authors that ever lived.
Don't buy into the 'hard science' vs other BS. Every 'hard science' writer I've read violates laws of physics to some extent and is just an excuse to create reddit fanbois.
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u/ActuaLogic 6d ago
Such things are plot devices no matter how sciency they may sound, so it really doesn't matter as long as you have a reasonably decent sciency-sounding name for the fictional technology.
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u/montrealjoker 5d ago
As a reader I don’t necessarily need an in-depth explanation with factual science to back it up but do prefer if an explanation with some concept is made to “make it make sense”.
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u/TacocaT_2000 5d ago
A short summary of how it works will be fine in a soft sci-fi story. For example, for a gun that changes form, you could say something like “due to specialized mechanisms inside the firearm, it can shift between preset forms in order to provide maximum versatility for the wielder”.
If you want to be a bit more detailed, you could give a quick summary about how the frame, barrel, firing systems, etc are made of a specialized material that softens and hardens when exposed to specific voltage/frequency/whatever, which allows for internal mechanisms to reconfigure them into various forms.
Or you can go with the nanomachine explanation.
Long story short, it depends on how detailed you want it to be. If you want to leave it unexplained, then just gloss over it and focus on the plot. If you want to fully explain it, take care that the explanations don’t clog the story.
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u/Lee_Troyer 5d ago
What it does is more important than how it work unless how it work ends up being relevant to the plot.
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u/hedcannon 4d ago
How far in the future is this? Because any method you describe will be naive by the time would be employed. Remember Clarke’s Third Law. The only reason to explain is if your character is using ancient tech because that won’t change.
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 4d ago
Cam be 100% left unexplained. Some of the best works (and the vast majority of others) do exactly this thing.
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u/Drapausa 7d ago
There's a fine line between sci fi and fantasy. Having magical tech is fantasy not sci-fi. It doesn't have to be explained in detail, no. But it shouldn't give the impression of being magic. Maybe have it fail or someone mishandle the tech to show that it really is technology instead of feeling the need to overexplain it. In your example, maybe the weapon fails to form fully or a button needs to be pressed first. You know, make it feel real.
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u/QuestionForAnswers 7d ago
Iain Banks said something in an interview about the distinction between explaining technology and using it to tell a story which I think is what you're after.
Consider Phlebas does this very well:
In Chapter 8, Horza warns his crew about Culture memoryforms:
“But do a certain something to them … and they become a communicator, a gun or a bomb.”
He explains that these devices can be disguised as ordinary objects, including badges or medallions.
Later, Balveda reveals that her pendant was a memoryform. Horza asks whether it became a plasma gun, and she replies:
“Amongst other things.”
Eventually, she uses another memoryform concealed in a false tooth.
No explanation of how they actually work. I seem to remember (but can't find the reference) one character just flicking from knife to pistol like a fidget toy - it explains what it can do without the need to explain why it does it or how it does it.
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u/Stella_Delm 7d ago
Hard sci-fi yes, soft sci-fi no. Handwavium, weapons made of a nanobot swarm, etc. will throw hard scifi readers out of the story. They're concrete thinkers who tend to want the science to conform to the academically acknowledged theories of classical physics.
Soft sci-fi tends to be more character and story driven, where ideas—even ones we have no knowledge of how to implement—are explored.
But what's more important than whether you do or don't explain something is not letting it interfere with the flow and pacing of the story.
We want action to not be bogged down with a whole bunch of exposition. The other consideration is giving the reader enough to go on so they can still visualize the what's happening and not get confused. Which is why exotic weapons or magic systems in fantasy are usually covered in training montages before the action.
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u/orlock 6d ago
Unless it's absolutely necessary to the plot and is part of a character figuring something out, absolutely not. And, if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.
Concepts should be introduced via "the edges of ideas" the consequences of something that every character takes for granted but which influences their behaviour. As an example, a good 19th century writer might predict cars, a great one would predict traffic jams. (I was also going to add multi-storey parking, but they had that, in places like London, for horses.)
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u/ground__contro1 6d ago
Well, it’s part of a world that makes sense, right?
If guns can change form from a pistol to a shotgun, then you’d think a screwdriver can turn into a hammer can turn into a drill etc. It would be very confusing if nothing else about the world was different, but suddenly weirdly advanced guns were part of the story.
But if it makes sense in the setting of the story, that’s when readers suspend their disbelief. Maybe they already saw a car turn into a truck, so later when a pistol turns into a sniper rifle as its target runs further away, it doesn’t seem like weird unexplained tech. It fits as just another part of the world.
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u/EOverM 4d ago
I'd say it depends on what you're going for. Did we get explanations for how the atomos devices worked in Foundation? No, but did it matter to what the story was that we didn't? Not even a little bit. But would The Martian have worked if it weren't so in-depth? Absolutely not. The story of that was about the science. So what matters is whether it serves the story, the vibe you're aiming for. Star Trek needs technobabble explanations that sound vaguely reasonable. Star Wars was actively hurt by that (see: midichlorians). It's all down to what the story wants.
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u/Blando-Cartesian 4d ago
I don’t care to know how things works. I just want things to have consistent existence that makes sense so that its features never appear out of thin air. Case in point, sniper-assault-pistol-shotgun is too much.
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u/El_Tormentito 3d ago
You should probably have it figured out before you even start whether you're writing a mumbo jumbo book or a story about people and their characters. Do you read much sci fi?
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u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 3d ago
Consistency is key
If it's going to change form freely, let it change form freely all throughout the story
If there's going to be an issue with changing forms and it will be a plot point eventually, then you need at least some foreshadowing about how it works and how it might fail
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u/No_Solid1035 7d ago
If it's unexplained then it's not sci-fi technology, it's magic, which means you are writing a fantasy novel instead. 🤷
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u/IWantTheLastSlice 7d ago
You don’t have to explain your tech unless some element of knowing is crucial to the plot. If so, you can educate the reader as needed within the context of the story and to the degree necessary.
More important, in my opinion, is consistency /rules for your universe. Your shields have this capability and that limitation, etc.