One of the bedrock principles of physics is the conservation of energy. In this universe, energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
From Edward M. Lerner
Anything that can unambiguously represent two values - while resisting, just a wee bit, randomly flipping from the state you want retained into the opposite state - can encode binary data.
Too much detail can bog down any story. Enough with the history of gunpowder, the geology of Hawaii, the processes of whaling, and cactus and tumbleweed.
The medical nanobots in my novel 'Small Miracles' tap the energy sources that the patient's own body provides. That is, they can metabolize glycerol and glucose, just as the cells in our bodies do.
The challenge - and much of the fun - of writing in an established future history lies in incorporating new knowledge while remaining true to what has gone before. Expanding and enriching, not contradicting.
Some books are serials, not to be mistaken for anything else. 'The Two Towers,' for example, ought never to be read in isolation.
Readers and viewers will differ about what's totally standalone, what's totally serially dependent, and what's merely enriched by reading/viewing in a particular order.
Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.
Happily, researchphilia is not the problem it once was. The Internet makes just-in-time research very practical.
History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
5 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives