One thing science fiction writers should keep in mind is that your futuristic lingo for new tech should probably be minimal. The human tendency is to not adopt new words unless we need to. What we call a "phone" now does not even remotely resemble what it did in 1970, but we still just call it a "phone." We still "film" things and "rewind" and mac keyboards say "return." It's okay not to make up new words for everything.
@mishellbaker Oh this makes me want to write sci-fi where people refer to something as a "car" (or whatever) that just... obviously isn't the same thing that we consider a car. I love it when books do that.
@FeliciaDavin Oh my gosh yes, I would squeal aloud with joy if I read a book where someone said "Get in the car" and then we describe them like, hopping onto a disc of pure light and zooming away.
@mishellbaker There was a really wonderful non-technological instance of this in an Everina Maxwell book (Winter's Orbit, I think?) where one character is talking about how this particular wilderness has bears. And then they encounter one. The other character, from a different planet, is like "THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE CALLING A 'BEAR'? THAT THING IS NOT A BEAR." And then it gets described more fully and you, the reader, are also like, "THAT THING IS NOT A BEAR."
@FeliciaDavin@mishellbaker This is how I'm writing my work in progress. A "phone" is a little rod, shaped like a sharpie. A screen unrolls, and arms fold out so that you can wear it like glasses. It's still a phone.
The buses fly. That's what buses do.
"Movies" are 3D holograms. It's old movies that are "2D" or "flatties" because they're the weird old tech.
@FeliciaDavin@mishellbaker JMS did this in #Babylon5, to a degree. At one point they refer to old guns as "slug throwers" because modern guns use plasma. I loved it. So I stole it.
@FeliciaDavin@mishellbaker The other part of this, which I just remembered, is my book is effect post-capitalism, so there are no marketing agents making up fancy-ass names for new "products," just engineers making incremental improvements. They have technical names, but people organically decide what to call things, so just like you were saying: they use everyday terms rather than inventing new ones.
keeping in mind [] that your futuristic lingo for new tech should probably be minimal.
Minimal, yes, but not non-existent. BTW: There's a "return" key on some keyboards and an "enter" key on others. I think hard about the shortcut words I choose when writing SF—and fantasy.
For me, it's important to evoke a meaning deliberately. I need a good reason to let a reader misconceive what I am referring to. Take "car." I need a good reason to suspend their understanding to hit them later with what's different about it. Yeah, I'd use car for things that carry people, and the rich lady might take her Lambroghini to flit between orbital colonies. A character in an old story of mine uses a Chevrolet shuttle. I think I could get away with having a car turn out to be a flying saucer /once/ in a story, but I would need a very good reason to do so.
A reader's trust is precious: a delicate balance between suspension of disbelief and attachment to characters, mystery, and plot. I foresee a danger that the reader might take a flying saucer car as an excuse to stop reading. Worse, it could be an editor thinking of buying my book who instead shoves my manuscript back into the envelope.
Balance. I always consider balance.
Keep in mind that airborne, anchorperson, automobile, computer (the person), nonbinary, neurodivergent, smartphone, social media, and other compounds were coined as society and technology needed them, often by combining existing words or by being named after an inventor, like daguerreotype, leotard, silhouette, and nicotine. Don't forget coining word usage: they/them instead of he/him. (I think, but am not sure, that SF led the way with "pronouns.")
The love interest in my magical fantasy WiP talks about "photography" and takes "photographs." My MC knows about an optical device that produces a daguerreotype, but also knows of a non-optical device. It looks like a pair of vacuum tubes and produces something akin to but different from a holograph (I don't use "holograph"), which I bring on stage immediately when that becomes possible. Viewing resultant "photos" requires infusion of the same "radiance" that created them to be seen. Still "photography," but, note, not simply "magic" but "radiance," which goes with /light-writing/ (the etymology of photograph). In their world, it's a "gift," because of from whence what we'd call "magic" comes. "Magic" is an overload that means slight-of-hand, maybe charisma, even good luck, but also a miraculous force wizards, witches, and possibly the girl next door, with a found crystal, can manipulate. My characters still employ "wands;" I wanted a familiar anchor. I'd like to change "wand" to "foci" to avoid the meaning overload (you don't flick or swish them); maybe a scientific term when wand use is firmly established? "Wand" shows that even genre words can become as overloaded as common words, gathering potentially misleading meanings other authors have applied to them.
I judge my borrowed-then-overloaded common words, my usage, and my coined lingo against whether the words make the writing more transparent and succeed better in telegraphing my meaning. I often revise to common words, but sometimes to coined words when I think they'll increase understanding. I don't do it because it might be fun.
One last thing in favor of a shortcut word used consistently in a story. It can become a "brand name" unique to your stories. I can't tell you how many books by an author or in authors' series have become instantly familiar, homey, and attractive once I've recognized a few brand words invented or consistently used by the author.
@sfwrtr@FeliciaDavin@mishellbaker Well maybe you all can help me, then. I have machines in my setting that make food. They all make a kind of food: soup/chili, buns/breads, egg dishes, etc.
I had called them "autochefs," but that sounds a little market-y. I was thinking "food machine,"' like washing machine, but it's a bit blunt. "Meal machine" seemed closer to what a person might say, but I'm not 100% comfy with it.
[What to call something that makes food?"] You have any suggestions?
Mama.
I am not be facetious here! Things get real names, of course, like horseless carriage and automobile, but end up being a car. Short, descriptive, pre-existing.
People like acronyms, too, especially when we're talking about a situation where everyone is provided the same thing, like an army or on a commune. In a non-commercial setting, the soup machine could get something like COPS (Cooks Or Prepares Soup), or generically they could get something very utilititarian like FASM (Food Assembler).
Cookers would be good, too.
If they're called cookers, they'd say, "I'm going to go to the kitchen to get something to eat." They'd treat auto-chef the same way, letting the place describe the action. They might leave off the "to get something to eat."
If they used a nickname, they'd say, "Let's go see what Mama's making, today." Depends on your context, of course. People who are regimented or far from home would do this.
Most everyone had a mama. In their kitchen. Unless they're clones. They're not clones, are they?
Not to pick on Mass Effect, but I always think of, "You watch too many spy vids, Jenkins." Cmon, there is no way we won't still be calling them movies/films even at such point as they are wirelessly cast directly into our brains in 5-sense-o-vision.
@mishellbaker My 5 year old calls movies “videos” because he watched youtube videos way before we started watching movies with him.
I think one reason authors might do this is because language transition is slow and subtle. If you use a word the reader knows but to refer to something different, it may be confusing for the reader without the context. Imagine someone 100 years ago hearing someone talk about reading something on their phone.
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