Long, scifi
« Another thing which makes this worse is that our science changes over time. If I did the best possible research on what we right now think would be the best shape for a superfast flying thing (based on the Blackbird perhaps?), nonetheless ten years from now we might do other research and discover a new shape is better, and using that shape would come across as wrong and super dated. To give a real example though I forget what story it was, there’s an SF story set in the future where an explorer entering a derelict spaceship pulls out her cell phone and turns the screen white so she can see by its light–instantly dates it to the brief phase when phones didn’t have flashlights, and feels distracting. If it just said “She shone a light” it wouldn’t be distracting at all, it would always feel correct no matter how much tech changes.» from https://www.exurbe.com/terra-ignota-ama-questions-craft-of-writing-performer-casting/
I find it really interesting that the author thinks this is bad instead of one of my favorite things about reading older scifi. Everyone’s taste is different I guess??
Long, scifi
Two fun favorites:
There’s a scene in the original #Foundation Trilogy where our spacefaring heroes need to convince the planetary locals some kid is a god, so Issac Asimov puts him in a hover chair “bathed in a corona of nuclear light”.
In one of the William Gibson’s #Sprawl stories, “the sky was the color of TV static, tuned to a broken channel”, only more poetic; I need to look up the original line.
Long, scifi
@darkmirror i hope they’d developed some effective methods of shielding / treating radiation for that first one 😆
And that sounds like an evocative metaphor!
