A rabbit is a rabbit....

Is what you call the object as important as how you describe it?

For example, if you took a person from 1900 and showed them a cordless telephone, they probably wouldn't know what the heck it was. Telephones were very, very new, but many people had at least seen one. Big boxes on the wall, with a hand set and a long mouth piece. Both are telephones, but they look completely different.

Instead of trying to call things Vids and Ringers and Cams (or whatever), call them whatever feels natural. If it's television, call it television. If it's a potato, call it a potato. But use your description of the item to show us that it's new, that it's advanced and unusual to us, the reader.

That's the wonderful thing about editing. Whatever doesn't work now can always be changed later.

First, relax

Second, what Chaostitan said.

Third, I'd mix in new alien foodstuffs with old traditional favorites. I don't care how far into the future humanity gets, we'll still eat french fries ! Just pull some names out of your . . . ah . . . imagination and leave the fretting for your edits. Let the first draft flow out, and after it's all said and done, certain ideas will crop into your head about what things should be named or referred to as.

Your characters will have a better idea than you do, once they're made flesh. It's their world, they'll tell you what to call the stuff !

I think it's a bit problematic to rely on new names for old things to set your world apart from our own. Calling a rabbit a shmeerp doesn't make it alien... it's still just a rabbit. It's not going to change the 'feel' of your world to change it's name.

If you want your world to be futuristic, make it futuristic. Have tvs that fold up into peices of paper or ones that are built into the wall so that they vanish when turned off. Have camcorders so small that they're set into glasses, so that taking a home video is a matter of putting on some specs. Have french fries made out of hydroponic potatoes that grow to be the size of cantalopes.

That's the sort of thing that will make your world feel futuristic. There are places all over the world that have different slang terms for common objects. When I went to England for a conference last year, I didn't think "This place is alien," I thought "this place has different slang." The technology was still the same... calling it a lift instead of an elevator or a telly instead of a TV didn't change what it was.

On the 'vid' thing, by the way: A lot of science fiction seems to be using 'vid' for 'video' as in "get me rear vid." That makes perfect sense as a 'futurization' of language, because it's the logical extension of our tendency to abreviate. We say telly/tv instead of television, gas instead of gasoline/petrol instead of petroleum, Phone instead of telephone, etc.

I see doing that as a perfectly logical way to give a world a bit of different 'feel' than now... the trick is there has to be a reason for it. TVs have changed a lot since they were invented. The plasma flatscreens with ambient light of today look nothing like the boxy, tiny-screened monstrosities that TVs were when they appeared. But we still call them TVs. Why would a culture make the switch and suddenly start calling them something else? Would they just wake up one morning and decide to call them vids? I don't see it. It'd be as likely as them waking up and deciding to call chairs 'tembies' or something. Why would they? They've already got a word for that tech.

But I've got no problem with the idea that futuristic society might abreviate, because it's easy to imagine that catching on. Babylon 5 made mention of "Vicers," which was an abreviation of VCR. That scans just fine to me... my friends and I call SUVs "Soovies" all the time. It's easier to say, and things that are easier to say spread and become common slang.

Chaostitan and MidnightMuse are both right on, though LeeFlower gives a good counter-point. You got to make it feel natural internally – then it'll feel natural on paper. But there is a caveat: if you want this to feel like the future, you've got to differentiate this from today's tech.

For instance: Television itself will probably follow a whole different business/operational model to what we're used to today. Lee gives a couple of great suggestions on the subject, like folding or scrolling to having the wall itself be a display. But you can take it a step beyond conventional 2-d thought to 3-d displays – as if every wall were a window and you could dial where you wish the window looked out to. You could have holograms – either the cheapo obvious kind or perhaps projection tech so advanced you wouldn't realize you could stick your hand through it.

sassandgroove said:

...My problem is this. It isn't earth, it isn't now. It is an earth like place. I want flesh out the futuristic aspect without forcing it. I don't know why this gives me so much trouble, the second world in my story is lo tech, and I don't have any trouble with it.

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That's understandable. Probably since Lucas promoted a "used" universe, it's been the rage to make the future feel "lived in." That makes it easier to imagine when everything is run down (which really does connect to our day-to-day experience). The "clean" future is a bit more of a stretch – but it's not impossible by any means.

The easy way, off the top of my head, to promote the EPCOT-style future is to find the seams. See where the trash droids missed picking something up. Talk about the one odd surface that never seems to be clean no matter how much "they" scrub it. There's a million ways you can do it.

sassandgroove said:

Would they still have fries? Or something else? If it's a potato call it a potato,right? but I want it to be it's own place with some things unique to it. I get caught up in the details, i get all tangled up trying so hard to pepper it with futuristic stuff.

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I have the feeling fries will be around –*and that'll be controversial on other planets (if they weren't terraformed from scratch). Folk may eat fries... and others may protest that. Potatoes aren't a native species on Planet X. There could be things they call fries, but halfway through the book, your reader learns that they're not made with potatoes, THEY'RE PEOPLE! (kidding) They'd be made with a native plant that can be sliced and fried and taste just like potatoes (one of the things that don't taste just like chicken).

sassandgroove said:

When I re read what I've written, it could be today, there isn't much to differentiate it, but when I try to add futuristic modern details, it seems fake. Why does this seem fake when my lotech world just flows out of me? Am I trying to hard?

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The answer is easier said than done: don't just pepper – create. If it feels like you're just throwing a coat of technopaint on the future, it'll come across that way. That could even be what you're looking for if you're setting scene in a vacuous, upscale neighborhood of the near future (think Beverly Hills in 15 years).

OTOH, if you want it to feel like EPCOT has come to pass, you've got to get in there and really be a futurist. Make Walt proud and chances are the future will come across almost annoyingly squeaky clean (especially for those of us still living in a rusting world). Note that if you create a real-feel immersive future, chances are it'll feel as alien to a modern reader as walking on a foreign planet (just as folk from the 18th century would be freaked out by 6-lane avenues during rush hour).

Pretend you're someone from the world you're trying to create and walk yourself through a typical day. Where does she sleep? Breakfast? Job? Entertainment? What does it feel like to be her? What will she see as normal? What is strange?

sassandgroove said:

My problem is this. It isn't earth, it isn't now. It is an earth like place. I want flesh out the futuristic aspect without forcing it. I don't know why this gives me so much trouble, the second world in my story is lo tech, and I don't have any trouble with it. So being an earth like place, they have earth like things. But it is UltraModern. I call it a Vid instead of a TV. That I did okay. BUt their food would be different. Wouldn't it? Would they still have fries? Or something else? If it's a potato call it a potato,right? but I want it to be it's own place with some things unique to it. I get caught up in the details, i get all tangled up trying so hard to pepper it with futuristic stuff. When I re read what I've written, it could be today, there isn't much to differentiate it, but when I try to add futuristic modern details, it seems fake. Why does this seem fake when my lotech world just flows out of me? Am I trying to hard?

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I think it's kind of unlikely that humans would be able to eat plants from an alien world unless you have some very good reason (the panspermia theory, maybe?) for the plants to have the same biochemical structures as Earth plants. So I'd expect the people to have brought Earh plants with them.

The food of the future is kind of an interesting question. Remember how Dippin' Dots seems to have been calling their food "the ice cream of the future" for what must be decades, but it's never attracted any immitators? It would not surprise me if a lot of the food several centuries from now was recognizable as the food we have today - they may even still cook it over a fire in an iron skillet.

But there would probably be a few trendy new things as well, particularly if advances in food science, farming, or genetics makes it possible to grow ingredients cheaply that are very expensive now. Look at what happened to shrimp in the last decade; the price fell rapidly now that they're raised on farms like aquatic chickens rather than caught with nets. Or people may change their cultural prejudices against certain species. Pork may go out of fashion, a more thrifty world might have eating cow hearts come back into vogue, or grocery stores might be stocked with packets of frozen caterpillars just ready to pop in the microwave.

The food of the future is kind of an interesting question. Remember how Dippin' Dots seems to have been calling their food "the ice cream of the future" for what must be decades, but it's never attracted any immitators? It would not surprise me if a lot of the food several centuries from now was recognizable as the food we have today - they may even still cook it over a fire in an iron skillet.

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True story:

An early episode of Star Trek was the one with a polymorphing salt vampire (could shapeshift into people you recognized, and sucked all the salt out of your body).

To trap the vampire, they were going to have a dinner scene, where they'd pass around a salt shaker until the vampire went crazy for it, so Gene Roddenberry had the prop guy go find "Exotic Futuristic Salt Shakers."

The guy brought back props so bizzare, no one on set believed that anyone could look at them and say "oh yeah, that's salt." So instead, they just used something very plain, and described it in dialogue AS salt.

Those other props... You've seen them.

They became McCoy's Medical Instruments.

Molly Coddles is the Dippin Dots competitor but it tastes nasty comparied to nummy dipping dots.

Compatible vegitation won't automatically translate into Suitable for Human Consumption.

Think of all the plants on Earth that we can't eat. Remember earth-like is similar, but still alien and therefore not Earth. Lots of writers ignore that, and let people eat anything that's growing. It shouldn't trip you up, just keep it all in perspective.

I like to think - on the topic of TV/Vid - that humans in the future will have outgrown the need for that kind of mindless entertainment and will have gone back to reading good books.

But that's just the writer in me talkin'

sassandgroove said:

Why? Can you elaborate? I always assumed if it were an earth like place then it would have compatable vegitation.

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While we know what chemicals serve as building blocks for life on Earth, nobody has really figured out why it's these particular chemicals. There are a lot of ways in which one could imagine that alien biology could be different. Alien chemicals could be mirror images of ones on Earth. They might store energy in methanol instead of starches and oils. Plants might have cell walls made from silicates instead of cellulose. Or they may just be full of cyanide like some plants on Earth.

The idea of a species from one planet finding a species from another planet edible just seems like two companies independantly designing computers without any set of standards to follow and finding that they both can run the same software without any work.

MadScientistMatt said:

The idea of a species from one planet finding a species from another planet edible just seems like two companies independantly designing computers without any set of standards to follow and finding that they both can run the same software without any work.

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Independence Day, anyone? I nearly choked on my popcorn when the alien's computer displayed the Jolly Roger (with sound and animation) sent from a Mac. Cute idea, but completely unrealistic.

Astrobiology, exobiology, xenobiology... any way you say it, it's a fascinating science. NASA considers it a study priority, enough so that they put together the NASA Astrobiology Institute (and there's a dozen other amazing groups studying the possibilities as well).

MadScientistMatt said:

While we know what chemicals serve as building blocks for life on Earth, nobody has really figured out why it's these particular chemicals.

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From what I understand, it's a matter of reactivity. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen are the bulk players in the chemistry and assuming there's no exotic physics, the rules of interaction would be the same on the other side of the universe as they are here. So, while there would no doubt be differences, the building blocks would be the same and rules for biogenesis would at least follow some level of logic.

It lends insight to why many meteorites have been found not just with amino acids but "left-handed" amino acids – just like mom used to make. Some say that lends credence to the Panspermia theory (I lean prebiotic myself but I'm open-minded).

MadScientistMatt said:

There are a lot of ways in which one could imagine that alien biology could be different. Alien chemicals could be mirror images of ones on Earth. They might store energy in methanol instead of starches and oils. Plants might have cell walls made from silicates instead of cellulose. Or they may just be full of cyanide like some plants on Earth.

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There's a good chance they could be all of the above – from a single ecosystem. All you need is one planet with a wide range of environments and you can have a rich biodiversity. Imagine a common baseline among species on the largest environments, then you cram the extremophiles into the nooks and crannies.

MadScientistMatt said:

The idea of a species from one planet finding a species from another planet edible just seems like two companies independantly designing computers without any set of standards to follow and finding that they both can run the same software without any work.

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My guess: it would be a mixture. We know there are amino acids beyond earth – and chemically, they lend themselves to the formation of proteins. Take it a step further and chances are, we'll find there is enough common ground for at least a small percentage of cross-planetary compatibility. Other bits will be toxic, some to a fatal degree, others just enough that colonists chew a pinch for a light buzz (human nature and all)...

As with anything the best way to make the tech and world in general seem a certain way is to have characters treat what is strange to us as normal to them. Thats the best way to pronounce it.

Food may be similar, but still somewhat different. We have a lot more grain types now than we used to and fist sized apples are that way because man stepped in and made them like that. Typically we go for bigger, but the ultra clean society would most likely be focused on efficiency. I'm not sure what efficient food is like, but its probably not fries. Ever cleaned a deep frier? I don't know if they'd fit in the society. Unless you also have an underside of society that keeps things looking sparkly for everyone else.

Considering that it its going to be at least a hundred years before we get people who are born and raised on Mars it's going to be considerably further in the future for your story.

Think of the differences between now and the late 1800s. Anyone can communicate by simply popping open their cell vs using the pony express. Travel is hundreds of times faster and information is readily availble. 200 years in the future all of those things will be instant and require nothing more than your thought. There won't be screens or light projection of any sort for video, it will be direct neural link.

There are several companies making video paper and we're probably a decade away from our cell phones being cylinders that have roll out screens. That will be ancient history in fifty years. Holo projection from something the size of our fingernails will be after that and then someone will say, 'hey, why are we projecting light into the air and then picking it up with our eyes... lets just send the signal right to the optic nerve or the vision processing center of the brain.'

Actually since we already have rudimentary technology for passing video right to the brain (being used with blind people to give them black and white vision - still in its early stages) that may even predate holographic displays.

I'm not sure if that’s how advanced you want to make your tech, but within our lifetimes we'll be able to control every technological piece of equipment in our lives, from the coffee maker to the car from a single interface on a handheld device.

A new colony world that is following the ultramodern layout won’t have cars with wheels, but maglev systems where everything uses magnets to hover above the roads and then uses electrical current to accelerate via magnetism as well.

Those are just some predictions about earth's technological future. It may be that through the colonization process not all of that technology was retained, but with earth entering a stage where people can develop ships that can reach space for 20 million dollars (spaceship1) and personal jets (in development) that are cheaper to operate than a NYC taxi, I foresee people a hundred years from now living lives that will be as unrecognizable to us as ours would be to someone from a hundred years ago.

When humans colonize other places, they also tend to give things that are familiar-looking the same names as the items they are familiar with, even if they are a little difference.

For instance, a robin in the UK and a robin in North America are two different birds.

Fries will be made from square potatoes the size of my head.

Panspermia: The theory that organic molecules from a single source somehow were spread across the galaxy and landed on many planets.

Mix and match. Why not invent food out of ordinary stuff, and from other cultures? Why must you use fries and potatoes? You're describing a whole new civilization in the future. Even in our societies now, fusion is a big thing. French/Chinese combination. Japanese/Italian fusion... same can be said about technologies. Why limit yourself to TVs? If a cell phone can play mp3s and videos and send email messages at the same time... 10 years ago no one would even imagine that, but none of those functions (playing video, music, sending email, talking on the phone) are new... but the combination and the ease of use are.... the sky really is your limit when you speculate advance technologies.