31 KiB
Question/Discussion: Looking for input on reader preferences regarding use of "Named" physical laws/phenomena/theories in AU (not portal) fantasy/sci-fi. ex: "Darwinian" vs "Lamarckian" evolution, "Euclidian" geometry, etc.
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Author: u/Cuz_Im_TFK *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8x5fyr/questiondiscussion_looking_for_input_on_reader/
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Score: 31
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Created: 2018-07-08T22:37:29
Post:
So I'm doing some world-building and theory-crafting for a story with a heavily physics- and science-based magic system. One of the issues I'm running into is porting over "named" physical laws, phenomena, and theories.
This is a completely alternate world, not connected to the history of our Earth at all, and all characters are natives of that world (no portal fantasy, reincarnation, transmigration, etc.).
As lots of science will be discussed, there's a need for abbreviated or symbolic names for laws/phenomena/theories. To illustrate my point, I'm going to use the "natural selection theory of evolution" (Darwinian evolution) vs "Theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics" (Lamarckian Evolution)
So here's the question on what you guys (and by extension, hopefully my future reader-base) would prefer:
- Use the full, verbose, and informative name for these theories/whatevers every time I use them.
- Ex: "theory of heritability of acquired traits"
- Problem: Too verbose, unpleasant to both write and read
- Come up with my own shorthand/nicknames for these things and introduce them after explaining them
- ex: "Adaptive Evolution" vs "Selective Evolution"
- Problem: Less beneficial to readers who are actually learning something, since they're learning fake terminology. Not a problem when dealing with purely fantasy stuff, but is a problem when dealing with real science.
- Come up with fake scientists/theorists to ascribe these to after explaining them
- Ex: "Junipernian Evolution" after Doctor Juniper (Sorry, couldn't help myself)
- Problem: Same as #2, less transferrable to real knowledge since they're learning fake names/scientists for real things.
- Just name the theories and native scientists responsible for these theories the same way they are here on Earth.
- Ex1: the scientist who came up with the heritable adaptation theory of evolution just happened to be named "Lamarck" and the one who came up with natural selection just happened to be named "Darwin", or there's some other circumstance of the world that causes them to be plausibly named that way (like after a legend of an ancient creature called "Lamarck" mutating and having children that inherited his power)
- Problem1: Stretches credibility, may break immersion
- Ex2: have it somehow be made understood to the reader that since this is the "english earth translation" of a story from another world/universe, I'm just translating it as Lamarck for reader convenience
- Problem2: Not sure how to do this well, also may break immersion just from the Earth-names being mentioned at all, but at least doesn't create WSoD-breaking coincidences
What do you guys think? Any and all input or opinions would be appreciated.
If you can give me examples of what others have done, that'd be great too.
If you can find any problems or solutions I didn't think of, please point them out to me.
Thanks in advance!
Comments:
u/ArgentStonecutter [+22] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (4 minutes later)
I would go with 4 and also translate all your character's names to common English names. Or go with 3.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (an hour later)
also translate all your character's names to common English names
I'm terrible at coming up with "fantasy names", so I was already planning on using normal names to a certain extent anyway. Though it's not like there's only one country/language in any given world, so I can't just name everyone with english names.
Thanks for the input and the link, I'd never seen that before, though I confess I'm not really sure what to take away from it.
u/Escapement [+24] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 hours later)
The moral I get from the link would be something like:
If we try to take from English every trace of history and culture embedded in the language, we will be left with nearly nothing and what remains will not be pleasant to read.
We can't write about electricity without using voltage. Volta is of course an Italian scientist, so now we are using clumsy and inept words like "Electical potential" instead. Of course, electricity itself is a word with an English history, named (so Wikipedia informs me) by Gilbert from the Latin word for amber, as a coincidence from how he was first writing about it in the context of static electricity generated on amber - so to tear out the roots of our culture's history showing in the science fiction world we should equally ban the word "electric" and all it's variations and descendants. And so forth.
English words have a meaning and history and if you try to tear out all the words that expose the fact they're from our culture, you won't be left with much. And what is left, will be painful to read.
PS: I have never, ever been glad that a science fiction author invented a new system of measurement for length, time, weight, or other units of measure. Not once have I thought to myself, "I love how I just read the character is 42 akjangtal tall, so that I can look up the conversion chart somewhere to find that at a rate of 1 akjangtal to 6.4 cm to find out they stand 2.7 meters tall."
And, as always, an XKCD for everything
u/CCC_037 [+10] (9 hours later)
If we try to take from English every trace of history and culture embedded in the language, we will be left with nearly nothing and what remains will not be pleasant to read.
Maybe... but that Uncleftish Beholding link did have a certain poetry to it. I wouldn't try to learn atomic theory from it, but I think it makes pleasant reading for someone already familiar with atomic theory, as a kind of language experiment.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (8 days later)
If I was reading some fantasy sci-fi I would much prefer to read about the ymirstuff uncleft
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (2 hours later)
Thanks for the detailed response. That helped a lot actually.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (8 days later)
While this is completely rational if I was reading LotR and Aragon said he was going to go to McDonalds to grab a quick bite I would be completely taken out of it.
Even if it makes it instantly understandable that Aragon is buying fast food from a chain restaurant I would prefer if the author came up with another name. Or if when Frodo saw Gollum watching the ring and said "me_irl"
That's before you get into the legal troubles of using English words that are trademarked.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (8 hours later)
In Pullmans Dark Materials universe a different name for amber was used so we have "anbaric force" instead.
u/Croktopus [+1] (a day later)
while im with you on words like voltage staying the same, i dont like the idea of an alien realm having a Volta, and not just because of the disjointed feeling that gives me.
Volta didn't invent the unit "volt". it was named after him almost 100 years after he invented the battery. did fantasy!Volta invent the battery, or did he discover a way to quantify electrical differences or what have you, or did he discover some other electrical quality that got voltage named after him? was his name even volta? your name doesnt have to be volta for something to be named "volt" in your honor
words have their own etymologies, and are translated based on meaning. that simply does not work well with names or people. fantasy!Volta probably did invent the battery. but they probably have little to nothing in common with Volta, so just calling them Volta is confusing and disjointed for a reader.
u/wren42 [+1] (2 days later)
Use slightly modified versions of the real-life names, so the references can still be understood and looked up by the reader without being direct references to out of universe people.
So, Nolton's theory of gravity. Dorwain's work on heritability. etc
u/fubo [+9] (49 minutes later)
For one example of this sort of thing, see Neal Stephenson's Anathem, in which various philosophical and scientific ideas are given new names to reflect the alternate world's history.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (an hour later)
Thanks. I'll look into it a bit, but don't really have time to read a novel just for reference for this issue.
Did the renamed ideas in Anathem have direct correlates in our world or were they not quite the same?
And can you give me your opinions on how you felt this worked? Were they easy to remember? Did it matter if you remembered? Were any of these ideas discussed in enough detail that a reader could learn something about our reality from it?
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
Check out this glossary. I found the use of alternate words a bit masturbatory, but also right up my alley.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (3 hours later)
Wow, that's heavy. Thanks
u/rhaps0dy4 [+1] (3 days later)
Minor spoiler of Anathem because it's fun to figure out what the words mean
(Maybe I like these names a little too much)
I think for your case, making up a whole history of knowledge with alternate names seems very time-consuming, and will be detrimental to whatever didactic value you want your work to have. I would just go with 4.1 (scientists just happen to be named like Earth ones) or 4.2 (cultural translation).
u/Kuiper [+9] (5 hours later)
Just name the theories and native scientists responsible for these theories the same way they are here on Earth.
Problem1: Stretches credibility, may break immersion
I think you're going to have to do this a lot, and in fact you may already be doing it without realizing it. And while you don't have to use this solution in every instance, ultimately I think using names that people are familiar with is going to be less likely to break immersion.
For example, if you're writing a story that includes electricity, you'll probably be best served if you just describe the electricity in terms of "volts" and "amps," even though these units are named after Alessandro Volta and Andre-Marie Ampere, respectively. Same goes for watts, ohms, hertz, joules, and a bunch of other units.
Waving your hand and saying "coincidentally, the person to discover the proportional relationship between current and voltage in this universe was also named Ohm, just like in our world" might sound a bit too convenient, but making things convenient in this way will allow you to avoid having to re-name every single unit of scientific measurement, which would probably be more likely to take people out of your setting and remind them of the fact that they're reading a secondary-world fantasy.
If you're trying to scrub every word that's dependent on a proper noun from our world, you're going to have a tough time. For example, if you ever call one of your characters a "chauvinist," you have to contend with the fact that this term is derived from the name of the (possibly apocryphal) French soldier Nicolas Chauvin. The thing is, most people are totally fine with reading a fantasy story where the characters visit a graveyard and see a mausoleum without putting down the book and saying, "Hey, how can they be visiting a mausoleum when they're in a universe where the Greek ruler Mausolus was presumably never around to have this style of burial chamber named after him?" At a certain point, these "proper nouns" just become part of the language.
That being said, this doesn't really apply universally. When we get to the point where you can use the word "Darwinian" without capitalizing it, the word will probably safely evoke the idea more than the scientist, but until then, you may be better better off finding another way to talk about the concepts he's known for, using one of the many methods suggested by other commentors. But I think it is worth being aware of just how hard it is to discuss basic concepts and principles in a scientific field without using language that reveals the actual history of the people who studied it in our world.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (6 hours later)
Thanks for the detailed reply. I actually started coming to the same realization after reading /u/ArgentStonecutter 's reply. At this point, its the ones that are still capitalized, as you mentioned, that are probably the biggest worry.
I'm always a little irritated when I see writers using "mels" and "kilomels" instead of "meters" and "kilometers", since the fact that the measurements are the same but just named differently is annoying considering it's a different world anyway. That said, if you introduce a completely new distance measurement, nobody's going to enjoy going through the trouble of calculating it out every time even if you tell them how.
That's why I was initially attracted by the fourth option I mentioned in the OP, of just claiming that the readers are reading it in English on Earth, so it's been "localized". But I don't have confidence to pull that off well outside of a few easy cases like units and measurements.
Anyway, if anything, your reply helped me firmly abandon the idea of being adamant about wiping out culture/history references, but I'm still not quite sure what to do about "named" theories/ideas/phenomena that are clearly still proper nouns and not yet "part of the language". (I'm leaning towards coming up with descriptive shorthand names—#2 above—though.) But it seems the scope of the problem has been significantly diminished. Thanks
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (6 days later)
That said, if you introduce a completely new distance measurement, nobody's going to enjoy going through the trouble of calculating it out every time even if you tell them how.
Reminds me of Greg Egan's "Orthogonal" series. Great books, but he may have been a bit too thorough in giving their world its own system of units of measure... after a while you get a rough sense of what their order of magnitudes are, but you'd need to keep the conversion table and a calculator at hand at all times to follow properly through all the descriptions.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+8] Godric Gryffindor (18 hours later)
Fantasize the names? D'arwin and Lahmahrk.
u/Croktopus [+3] (a day later)
thats pretty cute. kinda would worry about someone learning about Lamarck for the first time through this and misspelling it for years until someone points it out to them, but that could be funny on its own
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (a day later)
like the twelfth letter of the alphabet, "elemeno"
u/rhaps0dy4 [+1] (3 days later)
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u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (6 days later)
Mostly works in a joke setting though. Would be perfect for a Discworld like story. In a more serious context it'd feel pretty jarring and break suspension of disbelief.
u/PastafarianGames [+7] (6 hours later)
I have literally never minded a fantasy author giving me a physics or biology lecture on the sly. Go with the same names we have here, and give context, so that people can actually understand the difference between (in your example) Lamarckian and Darwinian Evolution; and if it's not important to the story, don't bring it up in the first place.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+5] (6 hours later)
I have literally never minded a fantasy author giving me a physics or biology lecture on the sly
Good to hear. I feel the same.
Go with the same names we have here
I'm really tempted to do this, but I don't have confidence I can pull it off without breaking immersion/WSoD. Do you think it would really detract from readers' potential learning about real science if I were to (using the same example) use "Natural selection theory of evolution" and "heritable adaptation theory of evolution" (instead of Darwinian/Lamarckian) that are then reduced to some kind of descriptive, not-proper-named shorthand (with full explanations of course)?
and if it's not important to the story, don't bring it up in the first place
Oh, but it is :) Do you really think magic/mana that can alter reality can be considered safe even when it's not being actively used? In my world, it's highly adaptive and mutative which can introduce a Lamarckian factor into a predominantly Darwinian evolution. And I have a full mechanistic description for how this happens, all the way down to changes in genes. That's actually how I started thinking about this in the first place.
u/PastafarianGames [+1] (17 hours later)
Calling Lamarckian evolution "Juniperian" would be even more jarring, and also would weaken the "lecture on the sly" component. You could go without naming it, if you feel like it would be too immersion-breaking otherwise.
Consider also that immersion isn't the be-all end-all of stories; as a random example, Schlock Mercenary's footnotes/author's notes are often winking at the audience, but even on an archive binge it doesn't detract.
u/Croktopus [+1] (a day later)
descriptive, not-proper-named shorthand sounds like the best route.
while the words "darwinian" and "lamarckian" are useful in communicating about theories with others, they are entirely irrelevant to actually understanding the context, and i think people are insane to not think its weird for a fantasy world to have people named darwin or lamarck that debated about various theories of evolution. for me, that destroys my immersion (not irreparably but i think id roll my eyes every time it came up)
i mean the idea that youre just translating the name of some other poor schmuck who came up with a familiar theory. thats a person. you cant translate people. you cant even translate names, really - you transliterate them. it makes no sense.
on the other hand, there are some words that contain peoples' names as part of their etymology, and that i think is a more flexible area. easy example is voltage - thats a word all its own, and its just named after this awesome dude. but he didnt invent the "volt" and its not exactly his name and his name coulda been Volty or Voltso or Voltaire and it still woulda worked for the unit to be called the "volt". can't think of many counter-examples for words that wouldnt work, but im sure they exist
u/CCC_037 [+6] (9 hours later)
Okay, I've had a look over the other responses to this question; and here's my opinion:
Option 4, Ex2. Everything is the "English Earth translation", including the names of scientific theories. Now, there are a number of major framing devices I can see to pull this off:
Have a prologue in which a historian (many years after the events depicted in the story) finds a copy of an 'original manuscript' in some out-of-the-way place, written perhaps in Latin, or German, or Atlantean or whatever is suitable to your story. Present the rest of the story as your historian's translation of the manuscript. (Readers of Tolkien will be familiar with this framing device).
Introduce some handwavium (like Star Trek's universal translator) that allows automatic translation into any language. Suggest that such a device was used to translate the text into a common language of the world it landed up on.
Have a 'Foreword From The Author' - in a Watsonian sense of 'author' (i.e. another character in your story, perhaps centuries after the events of the story) in which he describes why he translated the names of various scientific theories (and various animals) 'to better match those known to your world'.
Just use the real-world names of the theories and don't explain the match-up.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+5] (9 hours later)
Those are some good suggestions. Thanks for that.
This type of solution is pretty appealing to me if I can find a good way of framing it for my story, but after seeing all these suggestions for various solutions, I unfortunately think I'm going to end up stuck with trial and error between 2 or 3 possibilities until I find what works for me and what I'm least dissatisfied with. Your comment was the first to really help me take this option seriously though by making it more actionable, so thanks again.
u/CCC_037 [+1] (10 hours later)
Best of luck finding the right framing device for your story.
u/monkyyy0 [+4] (an hour later)
I say mixed, if its covered by 5th grade science rename, if it isn't don't.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (an hour later)
That's an interesting thought, but can I hear the reasoning behind it?
u/monkyyy0 [+5] (2 hours later)
Googling shit when the name is wrong is hell, yet trivial things are likely to be fine for world building and if they weren't could be patronizing
u/Croktopus [+1] (a day later)
i think author's notes solves this better
u/turtleswamp [+4] (18 hours later)
I think the best solution for rational fiction is not actually to mention the names at all and instead describe the portion of the theory that is relevant in the character's own words. Partly because show don't tell, but mostly because if your world with divergent history and physics has the same theories as our Earth you're doing it wrong. (they should have at least approached it from a different direction due to having different tools and getting different results on occasion, and that's the cases where the divergence doesn't mean our conclusions would be trivially incorrect in their world).
When a name is necessary it's best to choose one that is descriptive of the theories content (natural selection, maternal impression, speciation through mana exposure, etc.) As that makes it more clear what you're talking about, and in the cases where the fictional theories do match up with real ones you should get something vaguely google-able without a ton of work.
Proper names in the sense of "Daves theory" should be reserved for when "Dave" is one of your characters and they've already explained (possibly discovered) their theory on screen.
u/melmonella [+6] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (43 minutes later)
If you publish online, you can just put it in author notes with links. Like "Junipernian Evolution is named Darwinian Evolution in real life, here is a link where you can read more: (link to wikipedia)"
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (2 hours later)
I actually hadn't thought of that because I hadn't really considered what my final goal with publishing it is. Even if I publish it as a web novel at first (which I'll most likely do), I don't think I want to work myself into a situation where adapting it to a "real" novel would, by necessity, limit the amount of information readers could learn from it (as would be the case if the "author's notes" are no longer available).
u/CCC_037 [+5] (9 hours later)
I don't think I want to work myself into a situation where adapting it to a "real" novel would, by necessity, limit the amount of information readers could learn from it (as would be the case if the "author's notes" are no longer available).
Footnotes. Or an appendix to summarise such notes.
Though, personally, I think that doing the "English Earth translation" would be the superior option, it can be done this way if you prefer.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (9 hours later)
True. But after seeing the glossary for Anathem that was posted above, I started to feel pretty intimidated with this option (especially I'm not very good at coming up with "fantasy names" for places/people/anything). Thanks
u/keeper52 [+3] (16 minutes later)
I like option 2, especially if you can come up with good/evocative names. It seems worth it to do a 5 min brainstorm or crowdsource on each name, to try to get something sticky which gets at some aspect of the underlying structure of what's happening.
60 seconds of brainstorming on your example, the best I've come up with are Developmental Evolution vs. Mutational Evolution, and Seed Evolution vs. Lifelong Evolution.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (an hour later)
You don't think that would cause unnecessary confusion in less well-learned readers? If someone can learn something from what I write, I want them to be able to. But the different names for things that already have names on Earth seems like it might cause issues and have people just treat it as "fantasy rules" instead of something to be learned about science and reality.
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (an hour later)
Right, well, I'd be combining #1 with any of 2-4 in any case, since I intend to give full explanations and proper descriptive names. They're just unwieldy to use all the time (but not in principle impossible I guess, which is why I left it as its own option).
Do you have a reason for choosing #2 over 3/4? What about the "problem" I mentioned for #2? Not worth worrying over? Or just less bad than the others?
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (3 hours later)
I guess that makes sense.
Though there is a subtle difference between talking about "natural selection" and "darwinian evolution", I'm not too worried about those cases where a shorthand does exist. That was mostly just an example.
Coming up with good shorthands for things that don't have common shorthands is a little harder, but not impossible; it just might fudge the definitions a bit. "The Electricity Equations" doesn't quite map perfectly to "Maxwell's Equations" but might be good enough.
Thanks!
u/EthanCC [+1] (a day later)
Well, if you want readers to be able to learn from it you won't be able to give a description of the more complex things without some sort of explanation out of the narrative.
For example, evolution is well known and simple enough that you can just give an explanation, but something like the Fourier transform probably needs to be named for readers to learn from it.
My suggestion is to hyperlink the in-universe name to an explanation of the IRL concept, or if that's not possible put a footnote* on it. Discworld does that, and it's not too immersion breaking.
*It would be neat if you replaced the asterisk with a unicode pentagram (U+26E7) or something else magic related, but that may be hard to do.
u/Anakiri [+1] (a day later)
I strongly support 4.Ex2. In this case, if you do not use the specific word "lamarckian", then a significant portion of your audience will think that you just made up the alternative evolution mechanism, and you have deprived them of the ability to look it up.
Here's a secret, though: You don't actually need to make it understood that this is a translation. You can just call it lamarckian evolution and never imply there's anything weird about that, explicitly or implicitly. This isn't a hole that you need to put any effort into filling. As long as your story is about the science and not the etymology, it doesn't matter that the characters are "actually" saying "bìwshēm Zhún-Pèr" unless you're planning on Juniper Lamarck actually being a character.
At the end of the day, the purpose of language is to communicate ideas. You should use whatever words best communicate the ideas you want to put into the reader's mind. All of the other options (especially 3) obfuscate the topic. That's okay if you're trying to additionally convey other ideas ("Look how weird and different my world is!"), but that doesn't seem like your goal.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (6 days later)
I found myself dealing with this problem too when writing. Ideally, using the same terminology helps a lot follow what we're talking about; if you're not using "this is actually a manuscript from another world I found and translated" as a plot device, you can just make it clear in your preface/opening notes that terms really mean their local equivalent. Still, at least in my writing, for now I'm just trying to skirt around the problem ("classical" instead of "Newtonian" mechanics, etc.).
Of course, the ideal solution is to just have the world have its own scientific history and thus its own names, and make things clear by context. An especially memorable example of this for me was the way Philip Pullmann handled electricity in the His Dark Materials saga. In the parallel world in which Lyra lives, we soon hear people talking about "ambaric" energy. It's confusing at the beginning, but a bit of thought can make you realise that it comes from amber, Latin, while "electric" comes from elektron, meaning the same thing in Greek - because amber was the first material in which static electricity was produced and for which the phenomenon was known since ancient times. Same word origin, believable difference born out of convention.
Of course, this specific bit of world-building relies on the fact that this is a parallel world to our own, with a lot of shared history despite some significant divergences. It's also stated outright later when Lyra interacts with Will, who is from our world. But even before that, it's clever and satisfying for the reader if they can make the connection on their own.