Starting on my next novel - SciFi this time.

Readers find our work a number of different ways. Agents and editors generally want folks who are somewhat familiar with genres vs categories. If you are thinking of a career it might be a good idea to understand the difference between the two. (Categories on Amazon are based on *both* genre *and* category. Unlike pretty much anywhere else in publishing where the focus is on genre.)

Dennis E. Taylor said:

With well-written SF, the tech is mentioned only when it's relevant, and even then only in passing.

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zanzjan said:

I have to disagree with this, at least as it's framed. ... Different readers (and writers) have different tastes as to how deep they want to go down the tech rabbit-hole... some people like stories where the tech is only mentioned in passing. [Some want more.]

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Thanks for the comment. It comes at the perfect time. Right now I'm struggling with this very issue in the latest work in progress. I gave up long enough to take a breather from the problem by slipping into AW.

After reading your comment, I minimized this window and took a break from taking a break by having lunch. Then I went back to the problem point in the chapter and struggled through with what I hope will satisfy readers of both "less" and "more" persuasions. Here is my current solution and the thoughts behind it.

Basically, we can intersperse action with explanation. At a point in the book where the reader needs and wants to know the info, not too early or too late. And the info is presented fairly briefly.

I did this with a short chapter. In it the inventor and the company she works for have called a press conference in an airport hangar announcing the development of a new space drive. After a few sentences of introductory remarks by the head of R&D, the inventor takes the podium and gives an explanation. She ends with "Yes, I know this flies in the face of current theory, but the drive works. That is why when we sent out invites we said everyone should be willing to take a brief flight in our prototype. And why we warned that we'd be in zero gravity for 15 minutes. We want you to know in your guts and the seat of your pants that the drive is real."

My idea was that the explanation comes in the middle of action. The explanation is spoken, so is also action. Its tone is colloquial, not full of engineering jargon, so is accessible to all readers. It's brief, just two or three short paragraphs.

The inventor pushes a button and to one side of the people a huge door slowly slides open, revealing a 50-seat somewhat obsolete jet aircraft. Added to it on each side are long tubes. She points out to them as the space drives. "We'll go to 50,000 feet where the drive begins to work efficiently. Then we'll take a suborbital flight. Don't worry. We've space-proofed the plane and tested it in orbit for many hours. Everyone who wants to can stay and talk to Raymundo about the details of the tech."

During the flight the inventor interjects brief comments highlighting functioning to the drive. At the same time the passengers can feel the effects of acceleration or decreased or absent gravity. And so does the reader, making the space drive and how it works seem real.

In addition the reader is told that they can get more details from "Raymundo." This puts the really detailed info off stage but implies that there is much complexity behind the space drive but does not burden the reader with it.

Anyway, this thread helped me a lot. This is why I've stayed with AW for five years and contribute money regularly to it. Thanks all for your comments.

Slip Drive simply sounds cool! I wish I thought of that... I used Skip Jumping in my story, which is compacting the space ahead of an object's trajectory to reach its destination faster.

If it's 100 years in the future, Nuclear Fusion is possible. Another option could be the breaking down of common objects like rocks. According to one article I read, simple items have more than enough energy to power vast cities when their atoms are split. If you want to go crazy, you could invent an engine that does just that...which would also help solve the world energy crisis! Boom Nobel Prize!

For communication, if its on-world, leave it as the internet to keep it believable. If its off-world, why not invent a way for data to travel not through air or wires, but through light itself (Might be too fantasy-ish, but it does open the way for complications in the story, such as messages lost in black holes).

1: Vacuum energy is a good candidate aside from cold fusion. Basically, it's energy derived from particles coming into existence in a vacuum, a la The Big Bang. Matter-Antimatter creation, replicators, a post-scarcity society... You could run quite far with this.

2: QE is pretty standard these days for FTL communication, because it has such a hard basis in extrapolation from current science and has been in Sci-Fi since at least 1985's Ender's Game and the ansibles. I'm sure if you research you could find an earlier example.

3: IMO, alternate dimensions aren't really hard Sci-Fi anymore, but if you want to still go that route it's fine. According to current ideas, there are anywhere between 10-12 total dimensions. If you want to get away with hard science FTL travel, maybe having a ship bump up to the 4th dimension, time, and then come back down wherever the crew wants it to be, might work? Just my 2 cents though.