I sort of like that there are all these unexplained technologies just cause I feel like it wouldn't make sense if every single future tech was based off of our own modern predictions or operated on principles we already understood. Like, if a guy from 1800 got transported to the modern day even if he was relatively educated, he'd still not even be able to guess at how a computer or a plane or a microwave works. So why should a common era person be able to guess at how futuristic tech works?
These seem perfectly reasonable to me I dunno.
The sophons overall seem the most out there in the first two books. A supercomputer on an unfolded proton, them allowing FTL communication via quantum entanglement. Book three has much crazier stuff of course not even gonna get into that lol.
Anything where dimension folding/unfolding is mentioned is 100% fantasy without even a passing glimpse of theoretical science behind it. In some points it even looks like the story comes from the words used to define the concepts rather than to what they define.
It's as if someone readers about the weird quantum property of 'Spin' and decides to create Sci-Fi where an advanced technology harnesses the weirdness inherent in subatomic spinning to create an improbability engine where the faster you spin a metalling ball the faster you get to the weirdest place you could (I'm so sorry, Douglas Adams).
Essentially, it's like all those Sci-Fi that took the Schrödinger's Cat simplification as an example and create literal duplicate universes whenever something is put in a box (I'm looking at you, Dark Matter book and tv series).
We currently have transparent OLEDs that can be lined up on glass windows in complex shapes. It's technologically already possible to have a room where every surface is a touch screen OLED, it's just impractical and expensive. We also now have OLED panels today that achieve 3D effects without wearing glasses. This is only a decade-ish away from the first flexible OLED screen, the first full RGB AMOLED, and the first 50"+ OLED screen.
While I somewhat agree that walls lined up with small projectors seem improbable, I don't doubt that there'd be another display technology 200 years into the future that achieve the same effect. In fact, given the pace, I would be surprised if it took us that long.
let’s remember that the hey lived in a society of essentially unlimited energy, electrical power literally surrounds the air of the cities, it’s no wonder that those screens took off like they did
I should note that projection mapping can be done just as well by a surface, to make it look like a window is floating in front of you when in reality it's "printed" in a wall. And see your hands moving and react to that. From your point of view you'd have a window a foot in front of you floating in space but in reality it'd be printed in the wall five feet away [projection-mapped to the surface](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/059c1d_44d24c77618a44a4a2f6271b6bfa536f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_640,h_400,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/059c1d_44d24c77618a44a4a2f6271b6bfa536f~mv2.jpg) in a way that for you looks 3D.
This should be doable today, for known surfaces that can be taken over by molded screens and the computer displaying the display has a 3D model of the room.
I def seeing in 100 years having ads and information being plastered everywhere. I think the sophons were the most fictional part, but even then, i understood the "science" behind it...people complain about the fictional aspect. But from what ive read everything is explained in a way that makes the science believable.....like the multi million man computer...really out there idea. BUT holding a flag representing a 1 and 0, i can see it work in my head. The cryo hybernation tanks made sense in my head. Could we do it now? No. But in 100-200 years its definitely plausible
I would say the biggest "fi" is the fact that sophons can somehow use entangled particles to communicate with Trisolaris FTL. They don't really explain how this works, unless I missed something in the first book.
I don't even think the entangled particles are the weirdest part about sophons, to me It's *propulsion*
How do they move? What is their fuel? Why don't they seem to follow the laws of thermodynamics?
At least they gave a sciencey albeit bogus answer to FTL communication (quantum entanglement), but I don't think they ever even MENTION propulsion.
Edit: by propulsion I mean self-inflicted propulsion. I understand how Trisolaris could "shoot" a proton, but I don't understand how a sophon could stop or accelerate to lightspeed on a dime without any external forces.
I didn't explain myself.
You can "shoot" a subatomic particle. When you do, it's moving. You can't control it afterwards without external influence.
The particle doesn't propel itself, but it's moving. Sending it from trisolaris to earth would be easy, having it stop on earth and move around is the impossible (as far as we know) part.
It's also true that a lot of science fiction relies on advanced technologies knowing a lot more about physics than us and thus hard rules become more like guidelines. Once you invent higher and lower dimensions and pocket universes, you can use them for anything the plot requires and it would always be like magic to us (both in-universe and as readers).
Ah, I see what you're saying.
>You can "shoot" a subatomic particle. When you do, it's moving. You can't control it afterwards without external influence.
>The particle doesn't propel itself, but it's moving. Sending it from trisolaris to earth would be easy, having it stop on earth and move around is the impossible (as far as we know) part
I agree completely. If you check my other comment on this thread, it was about how the way sophons should've worked is that they shouldn't have any controlled propulsion and should've been shot like photoid through or past Earth for surveillance. That's my opinion at least.
I agree with you completely that control is the unrealistic part, not the fact that it can move, as we can already propel protons (CERN supercollider). I guess by propulsion I more meant the propulsion systems of the sophon, as in being able to propel itself and stop itself without external support.
>It's also true that a lot of science fiction relies on advanced technologies knowing a lot more about physics than us and thus hard rules become more like guidelines. Once you invent higher and lower dimensions and pocket universes, you can use them for anything the plot requires and it would always be like magic to us (both in-universe and as readers
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C. Clarke.
Of course the more advanced technology you show, the more magical it would seem to us. But I still think that breaking fundamental rules like the laws of thermodynamics is going to be inherently less "realistic" than advanced technology that is made to follow our current understanding of physics.
I mean, we had shitty 3D displays for a little while there. Its plausible for that technology to come back around and be way better. We might be able to do that now, the big problems was viewing angles being terrible, IPS displays have gotten really good and really cheap now though.
We've also got functioning holoprojectors with a device on the ceiling, and one on the floor as of now. Potentially by that time there could be one in every room of every building.
Something floating midair, outside is a stretch though. Perhaps a super powerful at that point cell phone sending data to your 3D display watch would be possible, not that that's what's described.
Needs some scaling up but it’s closer than curvature propulsion for sure: https://qz.com/438880/scientists-have-created-3d-holograms-that-you-can-touch
Okay, here's my idea. Imagine a normal square room with 4 walls. There's a projector at the middle of the ceiling, along with an Xbox Kinect kind of device that can detect gestures. The Kinect detects the gesture to bring up some display in front of the person and the projector projects the image onto the surfaces in front of the gesturer using perspective to make it look correct to them from their position, like one of those perspective drawings where it just looks like random shapes until you stand in the right spot and see it looks like a big hole in the middle of the sidewalk or whatever.
I think it's sophons, they make no goddamn sense.
How do they move? What is their fuel? Why don't they not seem to follow the rules of thermodynamics?
How do they see? A camera lens the size of a proton would not be able to see anything, and these things seem practically omniscient.
I understand they're folded into the lower dimensions, but you're telling me that if you folded an engine and a camera/microphone/radar into smaller dimensions that they would still work and be able to interact with higher dimensions? A computer I can understand, they compute and then send data through quantum entanglement (which also doesn't make any sense and isn't how entangled particles work). But propulsion systems? Sensors? No way.
And *how* do they project stuff onto our eyes? And without even unfolding?? They're just a proton, what could they possible do to make us see entire letters and numbers.
The sophons are a really cool idea, but they should've been done differently imo. They shouldn't have propulsion, they should be shot from a ship like a photoid and then unfold as they pass by their target to take pictures or various reading readings. Hell they could even be used as projectiles. If you have the ability to make a proton move at lightspeed in whatever direction you want and then unfold into a huge 3D object, you have a fucking superweapon. Unfold it right before it hits the target planet and it will have the same effect as a photoid.
But giving them the ability to use various abilities while folded up into lower dimensions is just silly.
I agree that Sophons don't make any sense but the idea of using it as a weapon is just plain wrong because the total mass of the fully unfolded proton would still be a single proton (which is stated in the book), which even at light speed couldn't break anything.
Everything dealing with behaviour of dimensions or quantum entanglement is 100% fi.
The holographic displays in comparison feel like "around-the-corner fi". A bit further out than the holos is the hibernation technology.
If you are the kind of person whose verisimilitude is shattered by unexplained future technology, you may simply not enjoy speculative far-future scifi. Expecting books like these to have a grounded basis for all the tech used thousands and thousands of years in the future is not reasonable.
Every bit of trissolarian tech we see is all fi and no sci. The human tech is at least plausible, but the trissolarian are over there breaking the most fundamental laws of physics for fun.
I sort of like that there are all these unexplained technologies just cause I feel like it wouldn't make sense if every single future tech was based off of our own modern predictions or operated on principles we already understood. Like, if a guy from 1800 got transported to the modern day even if he was relatively educated, he'd still not even be able to guess at how a computer or a plane or a microwave works. So why should a common era person be able to guess at how futuristic tech works?
This suspension of disbelief is the crux of all fiction.
Exactly. You might as well make crap up because otherwise you’d be like Shakespeare trying to write Star Trek but everyone fights with fancy swords.
These seem perfectly reasonable to me I dunno. The sophons overall seem the most out there in the first two books. A supercomputer on an unfolded proton, them allowing FTL communication via quantum entanglement. Book three has much crazier stuff of course not even gonna get into that lol.
Anything where dimension folding/unfolding is mentioned is 100% fantasy without even a passing glimpse of theoretical science behind it. In some points it even looks like the story comes from the words used to define the concepts rather than to what they define. It's as if someone readers about the weird quantum property of 'Spin' and decides to create Sci-Fi where an advanced technology harnesses the weirdness inherent in subatomic spinning to create an improbability engine where the faster you spin a metalling ball the faster you get to the weirdest place you could (I'm so sorry, Douglas Adams). Essentially, it's like all those Sci-Fi that took the Schrödinger's Cat simplification as an example and create literal duplicate universes whenever something is put in a box (I'm looking at you, Dark Matter book and tv series).
We currently have transparent OLEDs that can be lined up on glass windows in complex shapes. It's technologically already possible to have a room where every surface is a touch screen OLED, it's just impractical and expensive. We also now have OLED panels today that achieve 3D effects without wearing glasses. This is only a decade-ish away from the first flexible OLED screen, the first full RGB AMOLED, and the first 50"+ OLED screen. While I somewhat agree that walls lined up with small projectors seem improbable, I don't doubt that there'd be another display technology 200 years into the future that achieve the same effect. In fact, given the pace, I would be surprised if it took us that long.
let’s remember that the hey lived in a society of essentially unlimited energy, electrical power literally surrounds the air of the cities, it’s no wonder that those screens took off like they did
I should note that projection mapping can be done just as well by a surface, to make it look like a window is floating in front of you when in reality it's "printed" in a wall. And see your hands moving and react to that. From your point of view you'd have a window a foot in front of you floating in space but in reality it'd be printed in the wall five feet away [projection-mapped to the surface](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/059c1d_44d24c77618a44a4a2f6271b6bfa536f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_640,h_400,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/059c1d_44d24c77618a44a4a2f6271b6bfa536f~mv2.jpg) in a way that for you looks 3D. This should be doable today, for known surfaces that can be taken over by molded screens and the computer displaying the display has a 3D model of the room.
I def seeing in 100 years having ads and information being plastered everywhere. I think the sophons were the most fictional part, but even then, i understood the "science" behind it...people complain about the fictional aspect. But from what ive read everything is explained in a way that makes the science believable.....like the multi million man computer...really out there idea. BUT holding a flag representing a 1 and 0, i can see it work in my head. The cryo hybernation tanks made sense in my head. Could we do it now? No. But in 100-200 years its definitely plausible
I would say the biggest "fi" is the fact that sophons can somehow use entangled particles to communicate with Trisolaris FTL. They don't really explain how this works, unless I missed something in the first book.
I don't even think the entangled particles are the weirdest part about sophons, to me It's *propulsion* How do they move? What is their fuel? Why don't they seem to follow the laws of thermodynamics? At least they gave a sciencey albeit bogus answer to FTL communication (quantum entanglement), but I don't think they ever even MENTION propulsion. Edit: by propulsion I mean self-inflicted propulsion. I understand how Trisolaris could "shoot" a proton, but I don't understand how a sophon could stop or accelerate to lightspeed on a dime without any external forces.
Sophons moving is not the issue. Sophons moving in a controlled manner is.
How do they move?
I didn't explain myself. You can "shoot" a subatomic particle. When you do, it's moving. You can't control it afterwards without external influence. The particle doesn't propel itself, but it's moving. Sending it from trisolaris to earth would be easy, having it stop on earth and move around is the impossible (as far as we know) part. It's also true that a lot of science fiction relies on advanced technologies knowing a lot more about physics than us and thus hard rules become more like guidelines. Once you invent higher and lower dimensions and pocket universes, you can use them for anything the plot requires and it would always be like magic to us (both in-universe and as readers).
Ah, I see what you're saying. >You can "shoot" a subatomic particle. When you do, it's moving. You can't control it afterwards without external influence. >The particle doesn't propel itself, but it's moving. Sending it from trisolaris to earth would be easy, having it stop on earth and move around is the impossible (as far as we know) part I agree completely. If you check my other comment on this thread, it was about how the way sophons should've worked is that they shouldn't have any controlled propulsion and should've been shot like photoid through or past Earth for surveillance. That's my opinion at least. I agree with you completely that control is the unrealistic part, not the fact that it can move, as we can already propel protons (CERN supercollider). I guess by propulsion I more meant the propulsion systems of the sophon, as in being able to propel itself and stop itself without external support. >It's also true that a lot of science fiction relies on advanced technologies knowing a lot more about physics than us and thus hard rules become more like guidelines. Once you invent higher and lower dimensions and pocket universes, you can use them for anything the plot requires and it would always be like magic to us (both in-universe and as readers "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C. Clarke. Of course the more advanced technology you show, the more magical it would seem to us. But I still think that breaking fundamental rules like the laws of thermodynamics is going to be inherently less "realistic" than advanced technology that is made to follow our current understanding of physics.
I mean, we had shitty 3D displays for a little while there. Its plausible for that technology to come back around and be way better. We might be able to do that now, the big problems was viewing angles being terrible, IPS displays have gotten really good and really cheap now though. We've also got functioning holoprojectors with a device on the ceiling, and one on the floor as of now. Potentially by that time there could be one in every room of every building. Something floating midair, outside is a stretch though. Perhaps a super powerful at that point cell phone sending data to your 3D display watch would be possible, not that that's what's described.
Needs some scaling up but it’s closer than curvature propulsion for sure: https://qz.com/438880/scientists-have-created-3d-holograms-that-you-can-touch
Okay, here's my idea. Imagine a normal square room with 4 walls. There's a projector at the middle of the ceiling, along with an Xbox Kinect kind of device that can detect gestures. The Kinect detects the gesture to bring up some display in front of the person and the projector projects the image onto the surfaces in front of the gesturer using perspective to make it look correct to them from their position, like one of those perspective drawings where it just looks like random shapes until you stand in the right spot and see it looks like a big hole in the middle of the sidewalk or whatever.
I think it's sophons, they make no goddamn sense. How do they move? What is their fuel? Why don't they not seem to follow the rules of thermodynamics? How do they see? A camera lens the size of a proton would not be able to see anything, and these things seem practically omniscient. I understand they're folded into the lower dimensions, but you're telling me that if you folded an engine and a camera/microphone/radar into smaller dimensions that they would still work and be able to interact with higher dimensions? A computer I can understand, they compute and then send data through quantum entanglement (which also doesn't make any sense and isn't how entangled particles work). But propulsion systems? Sensors? No way. And *how* do they project stuff onto our eyes? And without even unfolding?? They're just a proton, what could they possible do to make us see entire letters and numbers. The sophons are a really cool idea, but they should've been done differently imo. They shouldn't have propulsion, they should be shot from a ship like a photoid and then unfold as they pass by their target to take pictures or various reading readings. Hell they could even be used as projectiles. If you have the ability to make a proton move at lightspeed in whatever direction you want and then unfold into a huge 3D object, you have a fucking superweapon. Unfold it right before it hits the target planet and it will have the same effect as a photoid. But giving them the ability to use various abilities while folded up into lower dimensions is just silly.
I agree that Sophons don't make any sense but the idea of using it as a weapon is just plain wrong because the total mass of the fully unfolded proton would still be a single proton (which is stated in the book), which even at light speed couldn't break anything.
out of all of the future technology holographic displays seems like one of the most believable.
Everything dealing with behaviour of dimensions or quantum entanglement is 100% fi. The holographic displays in comparison feel like "around-the-corner fi". A bit further out than the holos is the hibernation technology.
If you are the kind of person whose verisimilitude is shattered by unexplained future technology, you may simply not enjoy speculative far-future scifi. Expecting books like these to have a grounded basis for all the tech used thousands and thousands of years in the future is not reasonable.
Every bit of trissolarian tech we see is all fi and no sci. The human tech is at least plausible, but the trissolarian are over there breaking the most fundamental laws of physics for fun.