Science Fiction For Dummies

By Jave Harron

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exupry

Engineering for Dummies

Engineering is often something blatantly ignored in science fiction. After all, how often do you see one of a kind superweapons (with no backups or single, hard-to-hit weak points), illogical engineering (such as exposed bridges in spaceships and other things mentioned before), erratic structural integrity in forts (like it collapses when the Evil Overlord is killed), and pathetically slow death traps (as opposed to just shooting them)? When we do see engineers, they are mainly people on starships that speak in techno-babble, or types that build weapons and traps (often for evil overlord).

The differences between engineers and scientists are also ignored. To put it simply, an engineer applies what the scientist discovers. A scientist may investigate the properties of a metal alloy, while an engineer might use that information to see if the metal alloy is appropriate for use in a bridge or not. Likewise, a mad scientist would have difficulty building their giant laser without technicians or engineers to determine what parts to use. (Or even building the robots that would build the lasers instead of technicians.) A lot of times, a simpler product is best, since more parts make the device more complicated. The more parts, the more easy it is for one to fail (see above quote). Conversely, a more complicated device that does more (like a Swiss Army Knife) could be useful in situations where carrying a lot of bulky gear does not help. A good engineer must study how things can fail, since knowing an object includes the manner it can be destroyed.

Knowledge of engineering is especially helpful to hard science fiction. The "father" of hard sci-fi and speculative fiction, Robert A. Heinlein, worked as an engineering, and it shows. Heinlein knew that science fiction technologies needed more than just the "Rule of Cool" to stand up to technical scrutiny. That's why many of his ideas inspired a number of real life engineers. He did work as a technical advisor for the 1950s movie "Destination Moon" what won an Academy Award for special effects. Science fiction needs more people to do their homework on physics, particularly concerning space travel, energy weapons, and the like. "Star Wars" and even "Star Trek" have some pretty bad science. For instance, antimatter reactions power the Enterprise faster than light for some reason. And don't get me started on "Star Wars" space combat, with all the sounds in the vacuum, lasers that move slower than light, and illogical exposed bridges on spacecraft (to name a few).

Engineering is defined simply as applying scientific or technical knowledge to the design, analysis, and construction of practical projects. It's the science, essentially, of making things from roads to computers to spacecraft to medical devices. It means you first research the requirements of your project (wonderful thing called the Scientific Method works wonders here). You brainstorm different options on how to construct a design based on requirements (like, what sort of conditions will an object face, how strong does it need to be, how safe does it need to be, etc.). Then, you decide which option is the best given constraints like materials, strength requirements, safety required, cost, and construction time. Budget and schedule are things that also play a big part in engineering, in addition to the physical design of the object itself. In most developed countries, there are engineering professional societies with their own codes of ethics. Public welfare normally has the highest place, followed by employer confidence. Public welfare and safety always has the highest concern. This is logical. After all, if you design a water treatment plant that leaks toxic waste into drinking water, you should be able to publicly draw attention to the problem should the employer fail to fix it. In addition, many nations have certain safety standards that must be taken into account (such as a bridge must be designed to hold more than a certain load, and are designed for worst case scenario). Many also require exams to certify engineers with a license. If you have engineers in your story, consider what they are all schooled in and supposed to be knowledgeable about. Perhaps they use religious lore to turn technobabble into scripture (like the Foundation trilogy or Fading Suns)?

Countries with more free presses generally have better chances of avoiding public, individual, and environmental harm. For instance, an engineer that notes problems with a bridge in front of the media has a better chance of drawing attention and getting it fixed than a state that would shoot them to prevent them from looking bad. This is why Three Mile Island was handled in a better way than Chernobyl. There was no Soviet censors to block the engineering report on the incident for fear of making the Party's projects look bad. Likewise, cover-ups and political inaction look bad. In the 1970s, a certain American airline company did some investigations into a plane crash and found the engines were insignificantly supported. The idiot executives decided to destroy the report. One engineer found this disturbing, and rightly leaked a copy to the press. That was when the fun started.

Timetables can also be a major issue. Most devices require prototyping, modeling, and the like before a final version is produced. Certain software exists that helps engineers simulate various conditions exists. A prototype allows engineers to analyze different outcomes they might not have considered. Like if they find a new type of car cannot brake as fast as they want under certain road conditions, they have to fix that in the next iteration. Testing and retesting can go on for years. One reason the Evil Superweapon could be shoddy and have weak points is that it's the Beta Version, pressed into service by an impatient Evil Overlord. If the schematics for any secret project get leaked, then the fun truly can begins. Especially if they try silencing anyone that leaks them.

Even in fantasy, knowledge of engineering of fantastic devices can give a story more depth and help set it apart (especially for steampunk or bizarrotech). Who says magic can't be mass produced, after all? Why not have engineering in fantasy? Applying engineering knowledge to magic based devices is used in the RPG settings "Eberron," "Mage: The Ascension," and "Exalted." A new Dungeons and Dragons class in Eberron, the Artificer, is essentially an arcane engineer. A very famous fantasy engineer normally is "Cid" from the "Final Fantasy" series. China Mieville's "Bas-Lag" setting has merging science and "thaumaturgy" as a key part of its industrial infrastructure. My own novel The Father of Lights had several types of supernatural-driven technologies in it, from soul-burning steam engines to prayer-driven suits of powered armor.

Many real life pre-industrial civilizations had engineers of sorts, from the builders of Roman aqueducts and sewers to Egyptian pyramids to Greek clockwork computers to Minoan flush toilets to inventors in Song-dynasty China that took water-powered machinery to new levels. (Google "Su Song" and "Shen Kuo" for my favorites.) And let's not forget Dutch windmills, which were originally designed for managing water levels, but they found could easily double as mills. However, many times in the ancient world, these were not built with a commonly-agreed system of units of measurement (like meters or feet), but instead were apprenticeship taught. This changed after the introduction of the printing press and rise of guilds, though, as certain common standards were required to build ships, cannons, and new devices. After all, what good would your musket be if the bullets didn't fit into the barrel?

Let's not forget that most engineers were originally in the military. In the ancient world, armies often needed a specially trained corps to operate complex mechanical siege equipment, find ways to breach defenses, build roads and bridges for troop movement, construct fortifications, and the like. Siege engineering was a significant part of engineering, after all. There is a huge amount of overlap in engineering, so I'll stick to the major types. I'll go into the basic fields of engineering here, and a few applications and sub-fields of each:

Major Fields:

Civil: The oldest sort of engineering is civil engineering. Back in the day, most engineering was military. So, after wars, engineers would begin to apply their knowledge to civilian projects. These included building roads, canals, bridges, and the like. Top fields are geotechnical, structural, traffic, and hydrological. Geotechnical design things involving earth-moving, like construction techniques, mining, tunnels, road beds, landfills and trash dumps, and the like. If you like digging in the dirty and using heavy construction equipment, geotech's for you. Structural builds, well, you guessed it, structures. From houses to tool sheds to skyscrapers to bridges, structural engineering also includes a good bit of architecture (as wells as making sure an architect's idea stands up in reality). Hydrological engineers do things like channels, canals, sewer systems, ground water flow, aquifer management, drainage ditches, swimming pools, water treatment plants, and things involving water or fluid movement. If you ever wondered where stuff you flush goes, look into hydrological. Traffic engineers design roadways, place traffic lights, and generally work to control and alter traffic levels to avoid congestion on roadways and railways. They do other sorts of traffic as well, but their field often overlaps with other types (like say, working with structurals to design an overpass based on anticipated traffic). An arguable related type is agricultural engineering, which focuses on farming equipment (tractors, plowers, combine harvestors, and such), farming methods (soil conditions for different plants), and so on.

Mechanical: Mechanical, simply point, is the broadest type of engineering. Many things are made by mechanicals: Robots, appliances, cars, trains, drills, guns, aircraft, cranes, pumps, springs, and other things are made by mechanicals. A few notable subfields are material and metallurgical (who work with different metal alloys), aerospace (who build things that fly and go into space), and maritime (who work as shipwrights). Another subtype is industrial, which works on manufacturing processes and building different facilities (like factories or power plants). They determine how to make things, as well. The "father of mechanical engineering" was a certain S. Timonshenko.

Electrical: Electrical is another large subfield. Generally, if it uses wires, capacitors, resistors, and the like, electricals design it. Lightbulbs, radios, power grids, various sensors, telephones, computers, videogaming consoles, satellite dishes, digital devices, and others are all examples of electrical engineering products. A close relative type of this is computer engineering, which focuses on construction and programming of computer devices. Electrical engineering can also be broken down into "signal broadcasting, processing, and recognition," which focuses on sending and receiving of electrical signals, and power distribution, which determines the best ways to distribute electrical energy to power anything from a small device to a city power grid. Nikola Tesla was a very famous electrical engineer.

Chemical: Chemical engineers work on ways to produce significant amounts of various chemicals. For instance, production of those chemicals you use in science labs for chemistry count. If you need HCl produced in significant amounts, then chemical engineers can make it. Chemical engineers can handle things ranging from water purification to making types of ink to fuel refining to making medicines or drugs to environmental clean-up (like devising ways to clean up an oil spill without introducing substances that can cause harm to environment). A subtype here is petroleum engineers, who handle refinement and extraction of fossil fuels. Alternative fuels are also often covered under chemical (such as ethanol and biodiesel). Other types (like solar or wind) generally are electrical engineers' department.

Biomedical: This is another broad type of engineering, and the type I do. Biomedical engineering is sometimes shortened to 'bioengineering' depending on the school or specific program. Let's clarify a few terms: Bioengineering refers to the broad category of applying engineering of some sort to living organisms or materials involved in living organisms (like muscles or bones). Genetic engineering is the modifying organisms with gene therapy. A few fields involved in biomedical engineering are clinical engineering, biomechanics, biomaterials, biosignal processing, and therapy and medical applications. Clinical engineers often are in charge of handling medical equipment in hospitals and ensure they are working properly. This can range from setting up medical equipment (like X-rays or ultrasound devices) to designing it to mere "techie work" repairing it. Biomechanics is use of mechanical engineering type analysis to the muscles and skeleton of the human body (studying how parts of the body move and interact). Biomechanics can range from designing prosthetics and implants for broken bones (like hip implants) to analyzing the mechanics of martial arts moves to designing an artificial heart or other organs, or even modeling the effects of a muscle reconstruction surgery. Biomaterials concerns itself with the study of materials involved in living organisms and for medicines. It can focus on studying ceramics, metals, and plastics used in implants, or types of proteins and tissues in the body. It also can include drug delivery applications (like an arterial stent coated in drugs to reduce blood pressure). Biosignal processing deals with design of devices that take and react to signals from the body. A device that measures a patient's EKG (electrocardiogram or heart rate) and sounds an alarm when the heart rate drops below a certain amount is an example of one device. The application I hope to go into is neuroprosthetics (in other words, bionics). That is, mechanical devices that are driven by feedback from the brain or muscles. Bionic arms, brain chips, and the like are examples of that. Bionics is once place where science fiction is becoming science fact. The last part, medical applications, often takes the study of injuries from an engineer's standpoint (like fracture analysis of a broken bone), and the best way to repair it. This field requires you know chemistry, biology, physics, and bits of electrical and mechanical engineering. Some notable biomedical engineers are Robert Jarvik (who made the Jarvik-7, the first artifical heart). A notable patient is Jesse Sullivan, who was the first "bionic man." He lost both is arms, and was given a special prosthetic arm that operated from electrical signals from a grafted part of his shoulder muscles.

So, you might be asking, why should I have an engineer in my story? For one, they are good, practical problem solvers knowledge about a variety of subjects (technology, science, perhaps business measures, and so on). More than one superhero is an engineer who builds the devices that give them powers. Famously, Tony Stark engineers his own "Iron Man" suit, and Batman makes many of his own toys (grappling hooks, bat-arangs, utility belt, etc.). Likewise, even in a science fiction or fantasy setting, with fictional technologies, the engineer can explain how the devices work, how they can be repaired (or disabled), could improvise or improve devices in a pinch, and the like. A writer with a great command of engineering is Robert Heinlein. Keep in mind a few issues to consider: Social standing (like perhaps a high priest in a theocratic technocracy, or even a military engineer that studies structures for the purposes of sabotaging them), education (how they were educated, like from a school, an apprenticeship, or even cybernetic implant that downloads information into them), type of engineering (real type or fictional type), specialty in engineering (like sub-type or what in engineering they do, and limits to their training), and their role to the story (why they are there).

Engineers also offer great story potential. A main character might be devising a (truly revolutionary) technology for political or economic subversion. They might be a former engineer from the Evil Overlord defecting to switch sides. They might enjoy destroying (or attempting to destroy) their own creations as a means of testing them. They might be devising a new device while claiming to be working on something else, to throw off anyone spying on them. Or perhaps a cyborg engineer part of a religion that has a (literal) tenet of self-improvement, and the state of one's implants shows their own skills and rank in the society? So, when you introduce a new technology, consider how it can be used for good, evil, and everything else. And how an engineer would think of it.

For More Info:

Robert A. Heinlein: The writer who founded hard science fiction, and certified bad-ass.

Information on Engineering:

ASME: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has more information on mechanical engineering.

S. Timonshenko: The sadly forgotten father of mechanical engineering.

ASCE: The American Society of Civil Engineers has more information on civil engineering.

IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has more information on electrical and computer engineering.

Nikola Tesla: The most awesome electrical engineer yet.

BMES: The Biomedical Engineering Society has more information on biomedical engineering.

EfundaDOTorg: A website with many of the math and equations that engineers use.

Jarvik-7: The first artifical heart, made by Robert Jarvik.

Jesse Sullivan: The first bionic man.