An example of things that authors missed! I just watched a YouTube video looking at the history of instant communication devices in Sci-fi and Fantasy, and also how the author thought to use them in the narrative; contrasting that with how we’d actually use them through our modern understanding. They go on to argue that usage of instant communication is now so ubiquitous to our collective psyche that current sci-fi and fantasy stories can just invent it in basically every setting nowadays. It’s actually a really easy thing to cook up if your narrative has any kind of magic system, be it science or standard issue. https://youtu.be/2Pw_7vAK9k8
Are video essays, specifically ones about storytelling, my special interest? Yes, but I hardly see how that’s relevant.
Starting with the last. Read a play called “We Bombed In New Haven” by Joseph Heller. It’s all about smashing the fourth wall.
You might want to look up thse books. David Gerrard’s The making of Star Trek, and The Making of 2001 by Stephanie Schwam. Both deal with the problems of creating a science fiction movie at a time when every special effect had to be ‘practical’ and handmade. For example, on Star Trek there was a scene that involved a salt shaker. Production brought a dozen exotic looking shakers, only for them to decide that those things looked too weird and that the audience wouldn’t understand what they were. In the end they used a salt shaker from the NBC commissary and gave the others to Dr. McCoy to use in sickbay.
Also, think on this. To 1960s audiences Uhura as Communications Officer was a big deal. The audiences had grown up with [or actually lived through] WW2 stories where the radio operator was a vital member of the team. With improved communications tech, the people who made The Next Generation decided that the bridge no longer needed a dedicated Communicatuions Officer.
Finally, I can name a dozen stories where a Faster Than Light traveler gets a paper letter or a telegram.
It’s like all those stories from the 1800s of clocks stopping the moment a person died. Turns out of a lot of the clocks back then would stop running if you turned them sideways, which a lot of doctors did at night to be able to read the time of death.
We figured out how to install gas lines appropriately. Many “ghosts” were gas inhalation induced hallucinations.
And ‘juvenile delinquency’ stopped after they took lead out of gasoline.
It’s amazing how much the violent crime rate went down with the removal of leaded gas.
I like to read science fiction from that time and look at the things the authors, some of them actual scientists, overlooked.
An example of things that authors missed! I just watched a YouTube video looking at the history of instant communication devices in Sci-fi and Fantasy, and also how the author thought to use them in the narrative; contrasting that with how we’d actually use them through our modern understanding. They go on to argue that usage of instant communication is now so ubiquitous to our collective psyche that current sci-fi and fantasy stories can just invent it in basically every setting nowadays. It’s actually a really easy thing to cook up if your narrative has any kind of magic system, be it science or standard issue. https://youtu.be/2Pw_7vAK9k8
Are video essays, specifically ones about storytelling, my special interest? Yes, but I hardly see how that’s relevant.
(That’s an example of lampshading)
To wax pedantic.
Starting with the last. Read a play called “We Bombed In New Haven” by Joseph Heller. It’s all about smashing the fourth wall.
You might want to look up thse books. David Gerrard’s The making of Star Trek, and The Making of 2001 by Stephanie Schwam. Both deal with the problems of creating a science fiction movie at a time when every special effect had to be ‘practical’ and handmade. For example, on Star Trek there was a scene that involved a salt shaker. Production brought a dozen exotic looking shakers, only for them to decide that those things looked too weird and that the audience wouldn’t understand what they were. In the end they used a salt shaker from the NBC commissary and gave the others to Dr. McCoy to use in sickbay.
Also, think on this. To 1960s audiences Uhura as Communications Officer was a big deal. The audiences had grown up with [or actually lived through] WW2 stories where the radio operator was a vital member of the team. With improved communications tech, the people who made The Next Generation decided that the bridge no longer needed a dedicated Communicatuions Officer.
Finally, I can name a dozen stories where a Faster Than Light traveler gets a paper letter or a telegram.
It’s like all those stories from the 1800s of clocks stopping the moment a person died. Turns out of a lot of the clocks back then would stop running if you turned them sideways, which a lot of doctors did at night to be able to read the time of death.
You didn’t see anything!
The lights have always been this way.