The Science of Consistency

On fictional universes and the fans who rationalize them.

As a writer/editor at the American Council on Science and Health, I often criticize “crank” scientists who cling to a faltering theory long after it has become plain to all sane observers that the pet idea just doesn’t hold together logically. They are pathetic, quixotic figures.

We science fiction fans are not so different, though, when we struggle to rationalize away the contradictions in our favorite fictional universes.

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If Scotty witnesses Captain Kirk’s death at the beginning of Star Trek VII, it is extremely troubling to some of us—those who care, those who have intellectual integrity and the discipline of logic!—if Scotty is awakened from suspended animation approximately seventy years later in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and asks whether Captain Kirk is still alive. Scotty should know that Kirk isn’t! Something is wrong! It doesn’t add up—yet it must! It must!

For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours: if the main character in a conventional romantic comedy, possibly some movie for girls featuring Meg Ryan or someone like that, says at the beginning that she is an only child, she should not have a sister present at her wedding at the end of the movie. Stories like that—about boring, conventional people with their petty love affairs and their tawdry sex antics, people whom one could not trust when the chips were down and an Imperial Battle Droid were attacking your spaceship!—are relatively easy to keep consistent. It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.

Interesting - more stuff at the link... including comic fictional universes

Slate-cleaning measures such as amnesia often become necessary in unwieldy fictional universes. DC Comics, the creators of Batman, literally blew up their fictional universe in a 1985 comic book series, starting over from scratch in hopes of making the whole thing more consistent and modern. Unfortunately, they introduced some new continuity errors in the process, and the whole universe had to be blown up again in 1994. Finally, in 1999 (by which time I was starting to write a few stories for DC Comics myself), the editors hit upon a brilliant solution to keep continuity-obsessed fans off their backs: Hypertime.

They can count to one, at least.

I was thinking three, myself.

Are they named Bob and Bob?

My Bob was named John; I didn't ask if he liked carrots, or where his other Bob was lurking.

My Bob was named John; I didn't ask if he liked carrots, or where his other Bob was lurking.

Reading this after shrift's last post in Boxed Set is making me laugh and laugh.

Congratulations, Sheryl. Hayden is a good name. We know someone named that around here...

Oh dear. I was just reading an article in Maisonneuve that cited a book by an author named Ita Buttrose.

Insurance claim adjuster was quite pleasant. He warned me that there's a limit of either $1500 or $2000 for jewelry you didn't itemize separately, which of course we didn't. Even with the deductible, that will come fairly close to covering replacement value, if not sentimental value.

Time to go shopping!

As Teppy notes, that is my local grocery store that had the Billboard Liberation (which I am sad to report I did not see), a few blocks away and just across from Amoeba.

an article in Maisonneuve that cited a book by an author named Ita Buttrose

You haven't lived until you've had a bunch of drunken Australians singing to you about her.

Or maybe you need to be named "ita" for that to be scarring your omega.

Nice essay. Though my favorite excerpt may be the paranthetical

Note: I do not have children of my own and do not intend to have any, so it is only natural that I experiment on children from other families.

Reading this after shrift's last post in Boxed Set is making me laugh and laugh.

I did not inquire as to whether my Bob named John had a secondary sex penis, or if it was named wee bob.

Wee bob a loo bob a lop bamboo. t /rimshot