: Re: How to avoid or mitigate heavy science lingo and "technobabble" in a science fiction story? Background I am currently working on a small science fiction story (as referenced in a previous question

@LarsenBagley300

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If you watch enough Star Trek (at least the good series... the bad ones tend to do groan worthy stuff that makes no sense) you'll find that the "Royal Smart Person" will rattle off a string of technobabble and immediately follow it up with the "For the dummies in the back" analogy to something that's a bit more common for the people to understand. In the 24th Century of TNG, the audience would be lost when Geordie says that they could find the Romulan ships with a beam of charged tachyons transmitted between multiple ship's deflector arrays. Calling this a "web" or "net" helps the view understand what this is going to do as it will basically detect a cloaked ship crossing the beams and allow them to "see" the invisible ship. The original TOS episode that Introduced the Romulans basically explained cloaked ships as akin to "submarine warfare" which the viewers would instantly get.

The trick then isn't to explain what is going "under the engine" of the Ion Thruster, but rather that it will "spin the wheels of the space ship" in a mannner of speaking to help them visualize the concept. I have to admit, I'm a NASA fanboy and probably could tell you a lot of boring technical specs for the shuttle as a sixth grader, and I'm having a hard time with understanding what's going on with an Ion engine.

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