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Mar 2021

Hi, everyone! I suppose this could be directed both at comic artists and writers, but since I'm the former, I'll stick to this category. When creating your scifi story - especially the worldbuilding part - do you tend to base anything on our actual Earth science? If so, how much of it? What parts? What things are you particularly proud of? How much time do you spend researching? Are there any particularly obscure things that you picked out of a less known field?

I'm heavily invested especially in astronomy, astrophysics, palaeontology, and anything nuclear/radiation-related and love combining them in anything I make. I think the thing I'm the most content with is the flora in my story. A couple of years ago I've learned about the theory that vegetation on Earth could have been purple (or purplish, colour making it easier to absorb light) at some point and I ended up putting that into my manga - it ties nicely with effects of fallout and the sunlight obscured by dust in the atmosphere.

As for research, most of the time when I'm working, I have various podcasts or YT videos playing in the background. They are my starting point, and if anything catches my fancy, I dig deeper into anything I can find on the topic.

How about you? I'd be very curious to see what you came up with, please share your thoughts and links to your works!

Here's mine:

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    Mar '21
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    Mar '21
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EDIT:

do you tend to base anything on our actual Earth science?

When I'm ocasionally writing Hard Science fiction, the rule is to stick to the laws that govern this universe. For example as in the works of Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, to name a few.

And when I write (which is more often) Science Fiction Fantasy, anything goes, as in Star Wars (the Parallax Arcsecond gaffe, HyperSpace) and Star Trek (Warp Speed and Time Travel).

to a degree. newtonian mechanics should generally apply, but take creative liberties of course. No ones expecting you to have a firm grasp on relativity or string theory, even if your story becomes based upon those things

I love doing that! I know I came up with anything if I just hang on imagination but limiting and making rules makes things more interesting for me.

For my ongoing story "Die Instrumente Gottes3" Im using not only my own expericences but what Ive learned on different religions, theology and history.

For my next story ASEDO2, the researching has gone beyond myself and took me 20 years to be ready, first because Im not a scientist lol and one of my mc is a genius in biogenetic field. It took me 10 years reading about genetics, general medicine, biology and my own experiences at hospitals (sick) but taking the time to ask questions to doctors and nurses lol. I was a fervent enthusiast on the Dr. Doudna's1 work for a couple of years and I was so happy when heard she won the Nobel Prize last year :heart_eyes: I also secretly has been taking pics for references at hospitals when Ive been hospitalized xD It also has taking me time to research on locations and their historic bg. I still was stuck on some social-human relationship stuff (mostly as for how the people will receive it and will for sure want to burn me in the stack hahaha) but thankfully I got the help of a consultant for some anthropology topics, hes also helping me with the theology and philosophy for both stories.
Since the world is based in a near future, also politics are a matter of importance Ive been following for decades as well, local, regional, global, diplomacy, media, etc.

MY final obstacle is English... thats other thing has been studying on my own oTL
Im exciting to finally be drawing that story soon. But first, Im gaining experience with the first one.

That's awesome! I find philosophy in particular a rather alien field to me, though I enjoy listening about it from time to time. Also good luck with your project, the things you've mentioned there are indeed quite risky to portray, I hope it works out well. And 20 years of preparation, holy crap! That really is dedication.

I think that adding rules and drawbacks to your worldbuilding and mechanisms actually can work in your favour - it makes it easier to be more creative within the field. Figuring out how to do something and work around the limitations to fit within those rules can be an interesting story in itself.

When it comes to the science part of sci-fi, I prefer it to be (1) as realistic as possible, with some twist to make it fiction (it's not a research paper after all), but still believable, and/or (2) just show the tech or crazy stuff as normal and part of people's everyday life. I'm usually not a fan of technobabble or random words thrown in to sound sciency, so unless I like the story a lot, I'm out :sweat_smile:

For my current comic, I tried to make the genetic explanation of people having superpowers as realistic as possible, but that was kind of cheating since I do molecular biology research in real life. Also, one of the main characters, Claudia, was inspired by a failed project I did in grad school using nanoparticles, and I thought it was hilarious how in fiction (and to conspiracy theorists), nanoparticles are this borderline magical thing that does everything, but in reality they are such a pain to work with.

Here's the thing in case someone is interested. The art starts quite rough, sorry ^^

There's a things called "internal consistency" and "suspension of disbelief" that's pretty important for making light sci-fi and fantasy to work.

Thank you so much! haha I know. My consultant's face after reading my manuscript and storyboard was :fearful: :persevere::kissing_heart:

Summary

Summary

I cant say dedication, at least the first 10 years I kinda abandoned it because life so I only kept reading eugenics stuff and for the past 10 years I retake the idea for study the other things based on my first manuscript and what I wanted to talk about in the story. Im kinda surprised some of the things I wrote as "history" in my worldsetting are becoming true and not in a positive way wich will lead to the story´s present time... sadly, I know people will pay less importance to the science/philosophy/politics things than to the social or the romantic things in my story oTL I see that coming as well

Im alien to these sciences as well. Studying about them even if in a general way made my mind blown a lot of times but I was happy everytime I found a solution to a point of my original plot and taht it was a possible way to be real made me feel too relieved (so i dont have to rewrite it lol)
Yes! talking about things that are real (or could become real under certain circumstances) makes it for the reader a closer experience to these things/situations if they had to meet them.

@Azifri so cool molecular biology!! The word Nanoparticles sounds magical tho lol *subscribed *

You're amazing! Like I've said in the original post, I do love incorporating from real science a lot, but I also leave room for other things and limitations, having the patience to stick to realism is really something else. I like the idea of realistic superpowers quite a lot, what kind you've got for example? It got me thinking about My Hero Academia, where some stuff is explained to some degree (though still bending the rules), but lots is straight up pulled out of... somewhere not sciency at all.

And no such thing as cheating when it comes to knowledge you can base off, come on! :sweat_smile: The more the merrier.

That gives me hope that some day maybe I'll return to a big project of mine that I put aside over 6 years ago in favour of this one I'm publishing now. :') It would need lots of reworking and editing at this point, though.

@noenoh thank you, hope you like the story ^^

(had to look up My Hero Academia because I haven't watched it)

My explanation isn't really that sophisticated either; the same way we have a genome and an epigenome, I imagined we have a metagenome (not the most creative name but it conveys the message), which is basically a more complex level of gene regulation that can also modify the genome over time (like transposons, it can rearrange itself), and this would be the explanation for people leveling up their powers during their life. I sorta got the idea when studying developmental biology and induced pluripotent stem cells, and trying to understand how master regulator genes work as well as genes that are located in the sequence of other genes, making everything so complicated but it somehow works :confused: In my comic, not everyone has a metagenome, and people who have one may only have it to some degree (there will be a multiverse explanation as to why people of some worlds have a metagenome and others don't, but that will be mentioned much later), so there is also a limit on how much someone can "evolve" it, and cases where having a metagenome is detrimental to people's health. There is also the genome editing thing, which applies to the metagenome as well if people know what to modify.

Yeah, it's all BS but I have fun coming up with it :grin:

I'm a scientist by training and worked in medical research for a bit so it's hard for me NOT to get all scientific about my work... but in all honesty I've only ever read one author of hard sci-fi who actually knew how to write good fiction. :x (Greg Egan, if you're wondering). Everyone else just reads like a neat science idea wrapped up in cardboard caricatures. So I do not really value the lack of imagination of hard sci-fi that much, because IMO you can have a perfectly scientific story about a completely made up magic concept, so long as the characters approach their world with the curiosity of a scientist (Fullmetal Alchemist is an example of some really good sci-fi writing, and the story was about literal magic).

The core plot of Engram (my comic) is SORTA based on a theoretical concept in physics but if I'm being honest it's mostly magic. I've learned to have fun with it and not question it too much, because telling an enjoyable story > justifying it through our current limited (AND CONSTANTLY EVOLVING) understanding of the universe.

But then other stuff I've written was like near-future first encounter with an alien life form (spoiler alert: it was bacteria) and that's all right my alley of getting all science-y.

I like the idea of metagenome, so even with more artistic freedom, you can create a reason for these superpowers on people and for how rare and detrimental is for them, since nanoparticles are actually not really safe for human manipulation irl and I like how you included it on the biologyc area rather than just the materials (its different than the actual crispr cas9 manipulation wich leads to artificial powers in sci fi??? but you are still using genetic modif in your story too ) and seems justificable if it happens naturaly (even if not really possible but oh hey its sci fi). Idk for me makes sense xD

Summary

idk what Im talking about Im just hyped for the nerdy stuff here

Oooh, I love this! Yes for drawbacks!! I'll be looking forward to reading on that, once I get enough time to read through what you've published already.:ok_hand:

And you can do surprising things that are outside of our current physics if you lay a foundation for it - explain that there was a revolution in quantum mechanics or whatever is in the story. At one time, the end-all was Newtonian mechanics. Everything we observed could be explained by it..... until we found things that weren't.

I totally agree that the flow of the story should come first - that's why I asked what elements are incorporated into it, not the other way around. :wink: And FMA is such a good example indeed! Also, love the encounter in the form of bacteria.

Oh, the nanoparticles are meant to replace biological components so people can be controlled like living puppets :innocent: it's a different aspect in the story.

The human induced gene-editing I just left vague, because how it's done it's not that important in the story, only that it's not safe when done in excess or with bad intentions.

Also I must say

This is only because our world is one of those where people have no metagenome. In a different world it would make perfect sense! xD