scifi terminology questions:

shamguy4

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2007
Messages
449
so after making a thread on where I can get a glossary I have decided to just ask when it comes up in my book.

So here are my first questions:

Androids:
hate that name, and I know droids is copyrighted. I came up with my own name for robotic life but im still iffy on it. What about the term 'synthetics'. i have heard that before in a scifi game, where there was a whole synthetic race however I am unsure if that belongs to them or it can be used.

Also I know of A.I. and V.I but I think V.I. is owned by mass effect. (virtual intelligence)

Anatomy of a starships:
what are the main parts of a starship. I know there is a core which somehow, if destroyed, will result in an awesome explosion. A bridge, a battery? (whats the point of the battery if there is a core?)

I cant seem to find a basic anatomy of a starship on google....
 
Android: a machine shaped like a man.

Gynoid: a machine shaped like a woman.

Spaceships

A spaceship may come in all shapes and sizes and the terminology used would depend on the history of space flight with terms borrowed from other disciplines.

Engine: a machine that converts fuel into power.

Power Distribution Bus: a mechanism to transport power from the engines to where it is needed.

Attitude Control: keeping the spaceship facing the correct direction. Necessary in a strong gravitational field.

Bunkerage: where the fuel is stored.

Hull: the outer skin of the spaceship.

Bulkhead: Internal structures that hold the ship together. Sometimes incorrectly used to mean any internal structure.
 
Cool!
and a hangar? Hangar bay?
I think I know what those are but just to be sure.
And the bridge.
 
there is a core
That's the bit of a reactor that has the radioactive fuel (in real life).
"Batteries", two meanings from a common origin:
1) an array of weapons originally firing shot, later shells. in SF may be rail guns or lasers (though these weapons are real now, real high power laser weapons use one time use chemicals as well as massive amounts of electricity).
2) an array of electrical cells that may be one time use chemicals, or rechargeable to provide backup power (usually for gyro platforms, electronics, naviagtion and power to restart generators / reactors) when a reactor / engine / generator failure occurs. Fuel cells are a bit like batteries but use external liquid or gas fuel source to make electricity directly by electrochemical reaction rather than generator.

Basically Starships are very like nuclear submarines.

Bridge: Any location the ship can be operated/control/navigated from.
Hanger/Dock: Somewhere to put smaller craft. Shuttles, cargo drones, probes etc.
 
I thought the core was some sort of main reactor that holds the ship together at least in most scifi books and movies I've read and watched
 
I hate glossaries:

That said here is why:

If you are taking that which has been named and giving it a name to make it unrecognizable it seems like a waste of your time and the readers and if you are redefining old terms it seems a waste of effort and an insult to the reader.

On the other hand if you create something that is so uniquely new then perhaps a glossary for those terms related to that new thing should exist although that might suggest that the narrative lacks some clarity in that it fails to get the term across to the reader and requires a glossary.

Glossaries are for writers to keep track of their own usage of terms and perhaps great for the website as something extra to offer the reader who searches out the website. If you have used so many acronyms that you have to have a massive glossary then you might consider trying to explain them internally because it's senseless thinking the reader has time or inclination to look back and forth to try to figure out what you're talking about.
 
and movies I've read and watched
Totally ignore your entire movie experiences and tropes when writing. Movies use actors, action, sound, photography to distract from their daft technobabble. Almost all good SF uses existing real world terms.

Even modern science terms are usually only new if acronyms (Tokamak, LASER, RADAR, SONAR).

Calculators and Computers were once people with certain training.

Technical words such as Processor, Reactor, Core, Battery, Conduit, Bridge, Bulkhead, Hanger, wire, power distribution etc are all pre-industrial words often more narrowly applied but from same meaning. If Starships were real virtually all the terminology would be from existing naval and aircraft usage over 90 years old.
Gyroscope is term at least 80 years old.
Liquid Oxygen / Hydrogen rocket engines were first tested in 1930s.
 
I thought the core was some sort of main reactor that holds the ship together at least in most scifi books and movies I've read and watched

Essentially it's up to you. A core could be the energy core - ie what enables the propulsion and energy on board the ship, or it could mean the computational core - ie the main computer that looks after the ship; think Holly from Red Dward, or Mother from Alien, or Hal from 2001 etc etc.

But really it's your baby so call it how you see it. Ray's right, however, you won't need to go wild and crazy in making up new terms, as it's reasonable that future terms will have evolved from current and/or historical uses in the aerospace / maritime / military sectors.

As we always say, it's more important to get your story sharp; you can always tidy up the details in later drafts.
 
Core and Core material go way back; and twenty some years ago the company I work for was still using its own toroidal core wound inductors in their products.

They were and are in a lot of electric motors and even power supplies.
 
I just have a fear that I'll use a common scifi term wrong and get yelled at.

So im trying to stay way being that it's more fantasy. But I definitely need to have some knowledge on what's expected when my character walks a boards a starship because it will happen
 
toroidal core wound inductors in their products.
I use a variety of dust iron and ferrite cores in radio filters 100kHz to 30MHz. They are also used in miniature SMPUS that run 20KHz to 2MHz as the transformer instead of the laminated steel E I cores common in Mains or audio transformers.

Core stores in computers replaced mercury delay lines and CRT memories. More like tiny beads. You'd need about 16,000 for a 1K memory. They were replaced by 0.25K semiconductor RAM chips, so about boards with 64 ICs (chips) gave 1K words memory. 2G RAM = 256M 64 bit Words = 262144x more than a huge 1K word core store (16,000 little beads on frames).

"Core" has very many technical uses. Today really only used for the radioactive part (the fuel rods) of a Fission reactor and for the steel/ferrite/dust iron the insulated wire is wound on for transformers and inductors in electronics.

Ignore Cinema / TV technobable. Everything on a Starship can have logical obvious names in use for over 70 years in most cases. Laser is the newest word (an acronym), from 1960s and derived from earlier MASER.
Bridge, Hanger, Astro-navigation, Gyroscope (used in Inertial navigation, as a compass is no use in space), Radar, Microwave, Battery are all pre-1940.
Successful Commercial Analogue and Mechanical computers replaced meaning of Computer as Person in early 1900s! Electronic Computers since 1938 perhaps (Konrad Zuse's prototype was first, but the British one in WWII was used seriously, the German Military were not interested in Zuse's computer).

The only major difference in really good early Space SF, was that they had "Slide Rules" to check navigation calculations rather than the flight deck / bridge electronic computer or pocket calculators. I was still using a slide rule in 1st year of college!
 
There was a scene in Apollo 13 when the engineers were handed a problem and they all immediately whipped out their slide rules.
 
I just have a fear that I'll use a common scifi term wrong and get yelled at.

So what? Everyone here has leaned at some point that you can't please everyone. Write the book that's right for you and for your audience. Not all SF readers are theoretical physicists with nothing better than to nitpick. If you think there's an audience for what you're writing, then go for it and don't worry about what a small proportion of folks will think.
 
While I agree that you can make terms fit your specific needs there is a caveat.

That being that you should try to know most terms so if you decide to turn one on its head you at least have some notion of what the original term means.

For instance in my universe there came a time when spacing someone without a suit was wryly termed EVA so that those doing real extra vehicular activity in space with suits on had to come up with a suitable term to differentiate from spacing someone without a suit and so in my universe EVA means (spacing someone without a suit) or the space equivalent to walking the plank.
 
I just have a fear that I'll use a common scifi term wrong and get yelled at.

The only recommendation I can make is to read a lot of sci-fi. Classic writers such as Robert Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, and Isaac Asimov set major benchmarks. Recent writers such as Vernor Vinge and Iain M Banks appear to be among the biggest modern sf writers. There are a ton of major writers inbetween. Pick a few up and start reading. :)
 
Iain M Banks appear to be among the biggest modern sf writers
He was popular, but IMO more fantasy / space opera and weak SF. Stuff from 1950 to 1980 by authors that were Engineers, Scientists, Astronomers and had started writing before 1970s, there are some good non-technically educated SF authors.

As well as the older authors Brian mentions: Anne McCaffery, Ursula LeGuin, CJ Cherrryh, Harry Harrison, Larry Niven.

Many others too.
 
Make up your own terminology and keep it logically consistent. In my own universe (Shadow of the Stars) the most common form of artificial intelligence are AM agents, where AM stands for "activemail" - holographic "clones" of yourself that can talk to people in your stead.

Starship design is completely dictated by the technology you choose to include in your starship. A starship powered by nuclear fission with rotating rings for "gravity" will look very different from a ship powered by Infinitely Improbably Handwavium. Vernor Vinge's "Zones of Thought" series has starships that contain multiple different tech levels for traveling in different Zones.

The Star Trek school of starship design (still by far the most common on TV) basically originated as a homage to nuclear aircraft carriers (further lampshaded in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). The "Warp Core" is a blatant reference to real-life nuclear reactor cores: it produces the energy for the ship, it is highly radioactive, and if damaged it can explode in a catastrophic fashion. The division of the ship into Engineering, Comms, Helm, etc is similarly inspired by existing naval ships... as well as people traveling to and from destinations on shuttlecraft (ship's boats) despite the fact that they could just teleport.

None of this stuff has to be true for your own science fiction universe. Invent your own style of starship and it can stand on its own merits, just make sure that whatever propulsion system you have in Chapter 2 is still the same in Chapter 18.
 

Similar threads


Back
Top