Revisiting my previous books leads to a range of emotions. There’s pride (’this is something I created!’). There are moments of surprise (’I’d forgotten how well that twist works!’) But there’s also a vague sense of disappointment.

Yes, I may uncover mistakes (proofreading errors always slip through), but that isn’t what I’m getting at here. As I continue to write, my writing and story-telling improves. And there are moments in those older books that now feel clunky. There are passages (some long, some short) that I would now tighten. There is a great deal of room for improvement.

In retrospect, I didn’t use technology to its full in my Shadows and ShadowTech books.

In both series most characters have a lattice. This is a tech layer that sits beneath the skin and interacts with the body and mind. It can speed up healing. It can increase the efficiency of the body. It enables people to interact with different systems without physical connections, too. Pilots fly their craft by the power of thought. Hackers don’t need to rely on keyboards or other interfaces, only their lattices. People can operate machinery without needing to press any buttons.

The lattice also enables a kind of tech-based telepathy. People can ‘talk’ through their lattices, either in tight or wide conversations, without uttering a sound or moving their lips. With the aid of boosters, this communication can happen over vast distances.

Almost everyone has a lattice‌—‌but not everyone. A central character in these books has to cope with being seen as ‘inferior’ because of her lack of functioning lattice. Another character’s lattice starts playing up, leading to various complications.

So, what’s the problem?

Let’s take a step back. Think of mobile phones, and how different things were prior to their existence. Travelling to somewhere new meant using paper maps to plan a route, with no sat-nav to guide every single turn. End up in difficulties in the middle of nowhere, and you’d better hope someone came along, because there was no way to (easily) call for help. And if you came across something amazing you’d be telling people about it later, trying to convince them you didn’t make it up‌—‌no magical device you could pull out to record and transmit images and videos across the world in real-time. Need to know something? You’d have to visit a library instead of doing a quick internet search. Need to sort out your finances? Better make time for a trip to the bank, then wait five working days for any changes to take effect.

And I haven’t even touched on social media. Or QR codes. Or having a complete library of books, music and films on hand wherever we are, all the time.

Having these devices on hand at all times has changed so much of our daily lives that pre-mobile times are like another world.

Technology has consequences. Technology can change societies, in ways that can’t always be predicted. Technology can be invented for one purpose, but people will use it for all kinds of other purposes.

The same should be true in fiction. A powerful technology should have a major impact on day-to-day life.
I came across a great example of this a while ago. I think it was in Peter F Hamilton’s Salvation series (although I could be wrong).

Many sci-fi stories circumvent the impossibility of faster-than-light travel through portals or wormholes. Sometimes they are in set places (think Stargate), but in the Salvation books portals can be any size, and are extremely portable. Characters have collapsible portals they can carry around with them.

But throughout the books Hamilton explores how these portals could be used in so many different ways.

How do you change a desert into fertile farming land? You need water. How do you get water to the desert? You can pipe it in, after first laying the pipes. Or, with these portals, you can literally drop water onto the desert‌—‌a portal in the air above the arid landscape, a corresponding portal being fed water, and instant rain!

Cities would change, too. When workers can use portals to commute, there’s no need for mass transit infrastructure, so those unused wide roads become green spaces, turning the cities into more pleasant environments. With travel times so drastically reduced, there is also less need for hotels, less need for dense urban residential areas. Why live close to work when, with portals, anywhere is close to work?

That might be fine for the hoi polloi, but what about the wealthy? There’s no need for holiday homes when each room of a ‘house’ can exist in a separate geographical location, connected by portal doors. Eat in a dining room looking out over a vast Savannah, then relax in a lounge on a tropical beach. When that gets too warm, retire to the bedroom and watch the snow-covered mountains from the balcony.

And what about those exploratory craft travelling through space (because portals only connect to other portals‌—‌you can’t skip to somewhere totally new)? Hitting debris in space could be catastrophic. Place a portal at the front of the craft, another at the rear, and the problem is solved.

See what I mean? A technology that serves an important purpose in the story (allowing characters to travel vast distances without the time of that travel slowing the story), but one that has story-world implications. Even if the technology itself is ‘impossible’, the consideration of the wider impact makes it feel ‘real’.

So this is my challenge (one of the many) as I work on this new series. For every piece of technology I introduce, I need to consider the implications. How would it impact daily life? How would it be used for work and for entertainment? How would people twist the technology to their own purposes?

How can I make the fictional technology in my books feel as real as a mobile phone?

It’s definitely a challenge. And a daunting one. But this kind of world-building is all part of the fun of writing science fiction.

---

This post originally appeared as a part of my Substack on writing a new series. If you want to have these posts delivered to your in-box when they’re released, please consider subscribing for free to my Substack by clicking here.