Forum: Author Hangout

One of the problems you might encounter with using a real team and players in your story is known as a defamation lawsuit.

Well a defamation suit would require that the team/player become aware of the story.

Even then while nothing would stop them from filing a meritless lawsuit, US defamation law requires a false statement of fact. It's rather unlikely that a fictional story would be held to meet this standard.

It would be very difficult, in my opinion.

That's more or less what I said.

Jay Cantrell was served with a "Cease and Desist" for his use of the name of a real Junior College in the story https://storiesonline.net/s/65463/daze-in-the-valley. He had a couple of his characters going there because they would receive a similar standard of education there as in USC or UCLA for substantially less money - see chapter 104 there. I'm pretty sure he said it was a JC which complained and not UC or UCLA.

Jay Cantrell was served with a "Cease and Desist" for his use of the name of a real Junior College in the story https://storiesonline.net/s/65463/daze-in-the-valley.

Cease and Desist letters are cheap, easy, and don't require a legally meritorious claim. They also don't have any actual legal force.

Such letters are a threat to sue. However, they are also very often a bluff, the entity issuing it knows the legal claims are meritless and would never risk actually taking them to court.

Nice to know others experience. Thanks!

In other cases, characters are (loosely) based on real people, but often with major differences and always with different names. Some are composited.

The goal is realism of the form 'someone much like this person did a bunch of things, some of which are based on reality and some of which are completely fictional'.

The only useful reason for using real people is when readers actually know those people. For football that may be true in the US (for those who like football), but everywhere else it's very unlikely the reader knows the difference between who is a completely fictional character and who is a representation of a real person. Not knowing the real person makes using it in a fictional story useless.

Very helpful. Thanks!

Very helpful. Thanks!

handwavium

What's handwavium?

What's handwavium?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=handwavium

a term used when a science fiction writer "waves his hands" at reality and hard science for the sake of the plot. Refers to all unrealistic or impossible technology, such as faster-than-light travel, teleportation, artificial gravity, etc.

Handwavium is extensively used in movies, more so than in literature, due to the need to mass market movies to a scientifically ignorant public and because filming realistic space travel is relatively expensive.

Thank you.

{Handwavium is extensively used in movies, more so than in literature, due to the need to mass market movies to a scientifically ignorant public and because filming realistic space travel is relatively expensive.

}

See also: Technobabble, Unobtanium

I take a different view. Just because these things don't fit into our current understanding of physics is not proof positive that they are impossible.

Isn't that already more of technobabble rather than pure handwavium if you dive that deep?

The latter being more, yeah, that's it, sure, it was thought to not work, but see, gravity isn't as simple, and gets a boost at low acceleration (actually a hot current take) or whatever, and thus, well there's some unexplained stuff and it actually works.

John Stewart Bell of Bell's theorem fame covered that. It's been tested as well.

https://phys.org/news/2008-06-world-largest-quantum-bell-spans.html

My (also very relaxed layman) understanding of quantum entanglement is... that in a very, very simplistic terms of a simile, it's something like this:

Imagine you have a machine that's spewing out chips that can be of any of a set of colors, and can change color when touched or even looked at, at random. It is impossible to predict what color the next chip would be, and even if you know what color two chips were when produced, you will not know what color the one you gave to a friend is right now as it may, and likely has changed color multiple times since.

Then, when you order the machine to produce two entangled chips, all it does is, it produce two chips that are guaranteed to be the same color (but a random one otherwise) each sealed in an envelope.

There's absolutely no way to know what color the chip in the envelope is without opening it, but it is guaranteed that either it would not change color while in it. Or maybe both (or all) entangled chips would always change colors in unison as long no envelopes are open, we don't really know with is the case.

What we know is, that now, if you give one of those envelopes to a friend, and then later open the envelope you kept, you with absolute certainty will know what color your friend will find opening their envelope. And likewise, they will know what color you found in yours.

But since you opened the envelope and looked at it, your chip will change color to a random one, and no longer will be guaranteed to match the one in your friend's envelope, and when they open it and look at it, theirs will change color to a random one and would no longer match what you had in yours. The entanglement is broken.

The "spooky action at the distance" that gets people's panties in a knot is the *envelope* from this example. Because in the counter-intuitive chaos the quantum universe is, that's not normal. But it can't transmit information, only preserve the matching of the pair. Even that allows for interesting things though. Because you can tell your friend what color the chip in their envelope is, something they wouldn't have a way to know without measuring and thus changing the color of it. Or, you can, say, use a sequence of such chips for an encryption key, or something such.

can't transmit information, only preserve the matching of the pair. Even that allows for interesting things

For purposes of FTL, let's say you know a way how to open a wormhole to a region of space with a known quantum state. Normally, there's absolutely no way to know a quantum state of a distant place, current state of any place for that matter. Unless, you have an entangled copy with you. Now we talk about very long single use access keys. Some kind of beacon would sell those.

For purposes of FTL, let's say you know a way how to open a wormhole

A quantum speculum with entangled KY...??

If you take action to change the chip's color (e.g. to brown), that breaks the entanglement, and your friend's chip will not change to brown. However, the entanglement remains until you take action to change the chip.

Indeed.

The confusion is that both, the testing that preserve entanglement and actions that break it, are called measurements.

What bugs me the most, however, is when a story tries very hard to be accurate to the period then makes an unacknowledged mistake. ...characters are watching Die Hard, which came out in 1988, then a few chapters later the characters discuss a change to basketball rules in their state, but that change was in the fall of 1987.

In one of my projects I do such limited anachronisms knowingly and deliberately, while overtly the goal of the story is indeed to attempt the atmosphere and feel of the time and place.

While I never mention the exact date of the night the story takes place explicitly, I know it internally, and it could be rather easily discerned from secondary evidence by an individual knowledgeable in local specifics (like, date of Russian orthodox Easter in conjunction with certain Latvian callender's namesday).

And while I did actually check existence of most music mentioned, at some poiny a currency is being used that would be almost a year out of circulation at that day already (and it's exchange rate I check to date, but to a year prior), and then we visit a night club that wasn't open until the next winter. There's few other slight freedoms with facts, and the weather I didn't bother to check at all either, being necessary unlikely hot for what I wanted.

The adherence to historical fact go worse still if we consider detail of the main character and immediate events depicted. Like I give him a cellphone he only obtained a year later already, and increase his profit from certain activities a bit to back it up.

All are done for the flavor and plot reasons very deliberately, but also to obfuscate a bit and make it easier to argue the fictional nature of the story, with is... I don't know how appropriate it would be to call it a take on magical realism, but something such.

Most of the events (none of which are of historical significance or consequence) are likewise a made up mashup of things that happened, even if not necessarily in that order, place, or time, with things that could have happened, and some completely made up.

The same is true about characters. Most, but not all have prototypes who were present in, broadly, time and place in roles similar to depicted. I avoid using surnames where at all possible (with is consistent with local flavor, helpfully) and mix up the first names changing most.

Where I couldn't, and the historical prototype might be discernible (like teachers in the unavoidable real school the story takes place), I decided to abuse the fact I tell in foreign language and translated some surnames just like I do with some street names and some other toponyms for the desired nativist feel taking precedence over reporting accuracy and to avoid too often usage of words that would
look like total gibberish in English, but has actual, discernible, even if usually glanced over and unimportant meaning to the characters. Some of those translated surnames became a bit cartoonishly meaningful too, but such they were too!

And that's what I too am struggling a bit over too. While I'm mostly unconcerned about how I depicted my fellow students in this pseudo autobiographical piece, especially where it lacks specific, or there's a hefty mix of inventions there, some characters trouble me a bit even when being rather minor to the story.

For me as a reader, a lot depends on how accurate other details are and how much is changed.

I think I get what you're saying. I've enjoyed aspects of fantastical stories that connect to the real world I know, whether it's a place I've been, interaction with a famous person, etc. I remember, as a kid, our local libarary (small town in the South (USA), had a series of books called "We Were There" that would each put a kid or kids back in a historical period and let the reader learn about the time and event from through the characters' eyes. Loved 'em. Read every one. And I still like a little bit of that in my fiction. But, as you say, if it is a real detail, it needs to be correct.

Aroslav does this occasionally in the first Living Next Door to Heaven. There's an extended make out scene while the characters are watching Die Hard, which came out in 1988, then a few chapters later the characters discuss a change to basketball rules in their state, but that change was in the fall of 1987.

The way I understand your point is that they were discussing in 1988 something that had happened in 1987. What's the problem with that?