Just A Little Foolishness...

[Dale A. Ward]

I keep hearing about "Handwavium" and "Unobtainium" and such... and it got me to wondering.

Just what would be the properties of a Handwavium/Unobtainium alloy?

:p

[austenandrews]

Didn't the movie The Core list some properties of its Unobtainium?

[Rapier]

Actually, thats kind of the whole point. These metals have whatever odd properties you need them to.

Extremely durable and strong
Able to readily handle extremes in temp
Highly conductive (or insulative or resistive)
Light weight
Holds a good edge
Stops hard radiation (or doesn't)
etc

[Manic Typist]

Undergoes spontaneous reactions when it is most dramatic.

[Nyrath]

From Ken Burnside:

Handwavium
It flat out violates laws of physics. We're waving our hands and saying pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. FTL is handwavium in its many forms. I tend to hold that all these designs that ignore thermodynamics are handwavium, as are force fields and gravitic whosimawatchises.

Unobtaininium
We can't build a physical example of it, but insofar as we can postulate that it can be built at all, the laws of physics say it would behave like thus and so. Calculating the range and damage drop offs of a laser of a given wavelength, aperture size, input energy and conversion efficiency to make a weapon is pretty much unobtainium right now. While Handwavium and Technobabble tell you what you CAN do, Unobtainium usually tells you what is NOT possible.

Technobabble
"We've reversed the polarity of the tetryon flow through the main deflector dish, and the Borg's shields have dropped, sir." Or, "His midichlorians are more powerful than Yoda's!" or "Our spaceship is pulled through the aether by the outrage of honest politicians." are all examples of technobabble. Technobabble need not be bad, though in general it's only noticed when it is done poorly.

The ratio of Unobtainium to Handwavium to Technobabble defines how "hard" your setting will seem to be to the reader.

Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye) has a very high Unobtainium quotient, as does a lot of Heinlein's space fiction.

The Exordium series (http://www.kentaurus.com/exordium.htm) has a lot of well reasoned out Handwavium that's applied consistently, but has very little that's directly constrained by Unobtainium. It also uses very little technobabble, though it uses some (mostly when dealing the the aliens).

Most of the Lensman series (http://www.chronology.org/lens/) can be seen as Pure Technobabble with a bit of Handwavium thrown in to anchor it in plausibility.

Star Trek and most television SF is a mixture of pure technobabble and some handwavium. Things work because they make the plot work. Things fail because if they don't the plot fails.

Technobabble can easily lead to a farcical read.


http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3a.html

[Thia Halmades]

Holy crap. Repped.

[TheRavenIs]

Whatever you need it to be when ever you need it. That's all I got.

[Curufea]

I do think Farscape is an exception here - it is almost entirely Handwavium with very little Technobabble. A bit like Red Dwarf.
Not only is the technology never explained, the writers don't care about it - it's not what the plot is about. The characters are what the plot is about.

[Dale A. Ward]

:nonp:

Wow! All this response to a completely idiotic, totally rhetorical question!

Hoodathunkit?!?

:p