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Uncle Mac Profile
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Master Scribe

Registered: 01-2005
Location: Steger, IL. USA
Posts: 272
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Do you find it difficult to...


...write science fiction without worrying about copyright or trademark infringement? I do. I'm a Trekkie. A recovering Trekkie, but a space cadet none the less.

As I wrote Ascension, and as I write Avenging Angel, making sure that I don't use anything that already exists is a prime concern for me. Laser guns, space ships and the sort are all fun and pretty much safe to use, but when your story calls for a character to use a teleportation device, do you find it hard to not call it a transporter? Or when they use a handheld sensor device, is it difficult to avoid calling it a Tricorder?

One example in my writing is that many of my characters us personal data pads. In Star Trek, the are called 'PADDs'. I simply refer to them as data pads. Same concept but different name.
The Klingons and Romulans use cloaking devices to hide their ships. I use a cloaking or masking system. Again, same concept but different name.

For the rest of you sci-fi writers here, how do you approach this subject and avoid using terms and trademarks of your favorite series?

---
Jay M. Hurd
Author - Ascension: Book One of The Alliance Chronicles
ISBN# 1-4137-3709-9
http://ascension.pfrpg.org
Working on: Avenging Angel & The Migichinan Sourcebook
1/21/2005, 11:22 am Link to this post Send Email to Uncle Mac   Send PM to Uncle Mac Blog
 
David Meadows Profile
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Registered: 09-2003
Posts: 165
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Re: Do you find it difficult to...


I've given this a bit of thought and concluded - it probably doesn't matter!

I just watched an episode of Stargate where they refer to an invisible ship as "cloaked". It may have begun with Star Trek but now it's common vocabularly. Just as Star Trek used "warp drive" with impunity, though the term can actually be traced back to SF stories from the 30s.

Another point to note is that if your story is set in Earth's future, Star Trek will be part of your character's cultural heritage! There are plenty of examples of SF terms leaking into real life. The first space shuttle was named Enterprise as a deliberate homage to Star Trek. When a type of "stun gun" was developed a few years ago, the press (if not its inventor) dubbed it a "phaser". You can bet your life that if we ever do develop an invisibility shield then there will be a Trekkie on the design team, and guess what he will want to call it?

Some terms should probably be avoided, others deliberately embraced. How to make that judgement call is up to you. Don't borrow wholesale from any one source, but borrow logical (Captain) terms from a variety of sources and I think that it will add to the work rather than detract from it.



---
"Learning to listen
Learning to see
Learning is power
Making me free"
-- Jon Anderson
1/21/2005, 4:02 pm Link to this post Send Email to David Meadows   Send PM to David Meadows
 
SFGirl Profile
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Scribus Administratus

Registered: 01-2004
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Posts: 939
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Re: Do you find it difficult to...


I do sometimes check the glossary of science fiction technology at http://www.technovelgy.com/
to make sure I'm not using a name that's been used before. It's a handy and interesting reference. But most of the time I don't worry about it too much.

Interestingly, the characters in my 2003 and 2004 NaNo novels also use "datapads" but that wasn't a term I bothered to look up, since it's kind of generic anyway. If I'd come up with a spiffy acronym for them, like the PADD idea, I would have double-checked that, because that's the kind of thing that one might get into difficulty with.

I guess that's my general rule--check on specific name terms, but don't worry about generic object ones. I guess in naming such things it's a good time to haul out the old thesaurus and come up with something original.

Sherry

---
Reading: Best of F&SF 50th Edition
Writing: editing "Summer of The Widows"
1/21/2005, 4:11 pm Link to this post Send Email to SFGirl   Send PM to SFGirl
 
Uncle Mac Profile
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Master Scribe

Registered: 01-2005
Location: Steger, IL. USA
Posts: 272
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Re: Do you find it difficult to...


Thanks for the tips! I wasn't even sure if I could use a warp drive in my books. Instead, I developed the HEDGE Drive (Hyper Extra-Dimensional General Exceleration). It basically opens an artifical wormhole that will allow a ship to travel extreme distances using only sublight propulsion.

---
Jay M. Hurd
Author - Ascension: Book One of The Alliance Chronicles
ISBN# 1-4137-3709-9
http://ascension.pfrpg.org
Working on: Avenging Angel & The Migichinan Sourcebook
1/21/2005, 4:22 pm Link to this post Send Email to Uncle Mac   Send PM to Uncle Mac Blog
 


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