Thorns, 6
Professional Vivification
by Liquid Crystal
...
Manually attenuating the frequency of a thaumic wave can produce diverse effects, via interactions with both the target's magical absorption spectrum and the spectra of air and other surrounding matter that might scatter the beam. For an illustrative example, consider shining real-frequency (i.e. electromagnetic) thauma into a red pane of glass. That the pane appears red to our eyes means that red light is reflected by the pane, while green and blue shine through unimpeded. Of course, actual EM absorption spectra are significantly more complicated. Typically, there are primary reflection regions centered around the colors constituting its apparent color. However, there are also smaller peaks and bands of reflection all over the spectrum, small enough that they contribute little when blended together with the larger regions.
Complex-frequency (i.e. magic) thaumic waves behave by fundamentally the same principles, but in practice, the mathematics behind the phenomenon work out quite differently. We will consider purely imaginary frequencies at first, but note that this is an oversimplification; unless the magic is invisible to the naked eye, the magic frequency has both real and imaginary components.
Now, consider this question: What does it mean to rotate by an imaginary angle? Multiplying a complex number z by e^{i\theta} rotates it by \theta haydians in the complex plane. What if we plug in \theta = i\omega, with \omega real and positive? We're then multiplying z by e^{i(i\omega)} = e^{-\omega}; we're not rotating z at all, but rather scaling it. Rotating through an imaginary angle is scaling. Let's consider a thaumic wave with frequency i\omega, with \omega real and positive. Instead of oscillating in time, it decays in time. This is why magic bursts lose power so quickly when traversing much distance at all. Of course, a purely real-frequency thaumic wave (light) is expected to decay as well, but this is because air (or any medium) scatters and diffuses the beam. Imaginary-frequency thaumic waves are also subject to this decay, meaning they still decay strictly more quickly than a real beam of equivalent amplitude.
We can now see exactly why it's impossible to emit a thaumic wave with a negative imaginary component: Such a wave would grow exponentially in power, attaining arbitrarily high energy if afforded enough distance to traverse before being absorbed. This violates numerous conservation laws, including energy and linear momentum. However, this fact is a solid data point for time being a complex dimension (i.e. differing from spatial dimensions by a factor of i), and for identifying time reversal symmetry with complex conjugation symmetry. The philosophical reader is directed to Time and Space by Dreamcatcher.
The real absorption spectrum of a material can be described as a function from the positive reals to the interval [0, 1], quantizing what proportion of the wave's energy is absorbed (and how much is reflected). Though the complex numbers admit no total ordering, we will call a complex number \theta = \sigma + i\omega positive if both \sigma and \omega are positive, merely as a convenient shorthand. Thus a positive complex number is one that occupies the top-right quadrant in the standard plane depiction. Then the full (2-D) thaumic absorption spectrum of a material can be defined as a function from the set of positive complex numbers to the interval [0, 1]. Call this function \alpha(\theta). To first order, this absorption function (or, really, its complement, the emission function) typically factors into real and imaginary parts, i.e.
\alpha(\theta) = 1 - (1 - \rho(\theta))(1 - \iota(\omega)).Note that, since almost all materials show little-to-no magical resistance, the complex component of the absorption spectrum of a mundane material (e.g. wood, stone) is almost completely full. In the factorizable case, a measurement of the 2-D spectrum can be made by measuring each of the 1-D component spectra. However, there are numerous higher-order perturbations that can affect \alpha, such as the Haymahn effect and various multipole interactions. These perturbations are more prevalent in some media than others; for a more robust treatment, the reader is directed to Haymahn's The Wave Function.
...
Twilight makes a mental note of this reference, but knows she's sinking too deep into the theory. She skips forward a few chapters to the section on magic signatures, hoping for an in.
Every unicorn has what we call a frequency signature. This is a spectrum (i.e. a function from the positive complex numbers to [0,1], typically denoted as \Psi) that is characteristic of her magic. The restriction of \Psi to the positive real branch of the complex numbers is what determines the visual color of a unicorn's magic, but that is not the totality of information embedded in a spell; each unicorn also has a distinctive magical frequency signature as well. Like the absorption spectra of materials, a unicorn's thaumic radiation spectrum is typically first-order factorizable into real and complex components, but there are exceptions; famously, Princess Celestia's emission spectrum follows a 2-D radial Trot Song distribution, peaking around yellow in the reals. Star Swirl's spectrum exhibited an extremely irregular pattern that many believe was fractal in nature, qualitatively similar to the so-called Mewlia sets. Finally, the only known non-unicorn whose magic follows qualitatively similar mechanics to ponies', Discord, had a spectrum which defied all attempts at logical description and was only ever characterized experimentally. Of course, he would hardly sit still long enough for such an analysis to be performed with much rigor. Most data about Discord's spectrum came from retrospective analysis of whatever chaotic debris he left lying around instead of direct horn measurements.
Frequency signatures are typically regarded as irrelevant to everyday life. With one exception, there has never been found a correlation between spectral properties and magical parameters describing a unicorn's abilities. Neither raw thaumage capacity \Theta, nor spell power \Pi, nor recharge rate \Xi seem to be correlated with, say, relative concentrations in the spectrum. The exception mentioned above is that the integral of a pony's spectrum over the positive complex domain (typically denoted \Gamma, the thaumic modulus) is positively correlated with \Pi and negatively correlated with \Xi. However, measurements of \Pi and \Xi are significantly more useful and thus more ubiquitous, so \Gamma is typically computed from them in a unicorn diagnostic and not the other way around. Since two ponies with identical \Gamma but wildly different \Psi exhibit no measurable difference in abilities, knowledge of one's signature does not really afford the pony any useful information.
For this reason, administering a thaumic spectroscopy diagnostic is rarely done in practice; at best it is useless, and at worst it is a liability if that pony ever somehow finds herself in certain situations. However, with enough diligence and determination, a unicorn with academic interest or mere curiosity can usually find a thaumic spectrologist willing to perform the analysis for the right fee.
Signature knowledge may not be particularly useful in daily affairs, but there is a context in which it is of paramount value: magical combat. Though Equestria has been at peace for several centuries, in times gone by, the spectra of powerful enemy mages were frequent targets of espionage. The reasoning is this: when one unicorn's magic interacts with another's, the resulting behavior is partially dictated by the spectra of the pair. We will give a simplified example, in which we pretend both ponies' signatures are purely real and that their spectrum functions are Lilac delta functions. Say Allspice and Basil are locked in magical combat, and Allspice erects a projection around her flanks and front. Her magic (and her projected barrier) are pure green. If Basil's signature is also pure green, his vivification bursts and beams will reflect helplessly off of her shield. However, if his signature is pure magenta, the RGB complement of green, a beam of raw magic will pass through the barrier entirely, routing her defenses. If his signature is pure yellow (which has green as a component), some of his attack will penetrate and some will not. Namely, the pure red component of his spell will totally transmit through the shield, and the pure green component will totally reflect. A common first guess is that \frac{1}{2} of the power of the beam penetrates, but this factor is known to be \sqrt{\frac{1}{2}} instead. See appendix B for a derivation of this factor in the general case.
While our toy scenario is instructive, in practice, what happens when two unicorn mages cross horns is nothing like the above. Since spectrum signatures are typically far more "full" than "empty", the transmission factor is rarely more than a few percent, and one unicorn can almost never directly pierce the shield of another to any useful degree. However, this percentage can make a pivotal difference when compounded several times over. This is why unicorn combat brigades are often segregated by magic color, a phenomenon that poet Silent Spring famously dubbed the "blood rainbow."
There is another way advance enemy spectrum knowledge can be leveraged to (much greater) effect. Relying on there happening to be a mage in your forces with the right spectrum to counter an enemy is entirely up to chance, and only marginally useful in any case. But, on the other hoof, enemy spectrum information can play a pivotal role in the efficacy of assassination attempts. There is no known way a unicorn can alter her signature to counter her foe, but proper planning can utilize the enemy signature to extreme advantage. For example, consider suspending a vivification beam in a gemstone. Though the vast majority of mundane materials have almost completely full complex absorption spectra, gemstones are the archetypal exception, each type of gem having its own characteristic empty bands. As such, vivifying a gemstone of the right composition can be used to "filter" the spectrum of the beam, removing component frequencies (and of course weakening the beam). This suspension can then be released into a gem of a different type. With enough resources, this chaining can be used to finely attenuate the frequency of a beam. If this sequence is repeated enough times to bring the stored spell back up to its original power (or often higher), it can serve as a perfect, pointed weapon targeting the enemy's Aquilles' heel. For an undercover agent, these aptly named "killstones" can be easily passed off as any other spell suspension, to be unleashed after infiltrating to proximity of the target. This tactic is effective even on individuals of extremely high value and standing, who often have a dedicated unicorn continuously shielding them in times of war. It can also be instrumental for would-be-assassins who are significantly weaker than their targets. For a sketch of the methodology of a frequency signature diagnostic, refer to Appendix D.
...
The end of Twilight's quill has somehow meandered into her mouth. But upon reading that final line, and feeling something faint begin to shine, she retrieves it from between her teeth and sets it to parchment immediately, the other half of her magic beginning to turn the pages.
"Spike? Are you ready for a break? I've found a matter that's more pressing." Twilight gets up from her seat and walks over to the baby dragon, who looks up from Kingdom's Pride with a smile.
"I thought you'd never ask, Twi. This is some of the driest stuff you've ever made me read."
Twilight wants to make certain choice remarks, but she reminds herself he waited until he was done to complain. "Well, is it at least useful?"
"Eh... Maybe, sort of? Most of these books don't know much more than we do, but I wrote down a couple things that sounded promising. Oh, and Elements of Mystery was just a book about party planning—"
A shrieking gasp rends the studious air as Pinkie Pie bounds down the stairs. Wait, was she already in the hou— "That's my FAVORITE BOOK!" she howls. "Hullabaloo is like my spirit animal, if I weren't a pony too, or if she were, like, a squirrel or a gecko or—" she gasps again "—an alligator!! And some alligators know how the hay to party, lemme tell ya!"
"Heya, Pinkie!" Spike greets her, unfazed.
"Uh, hi, Pinkie," Twilight greets her in turn. "You're actually exactly who I want to see right now, believe it or not."
"I belieeeve it!!" Pinkie screams, craning her neck at an obscene Pinkie angle, for some weird Pinkie reason.
"...Eheh." Twilight doesn't roll her eyes. "Nice work with the school bell, by the way. Did Time Turner seem to understand his instructions?"
"He's got them down! It's like he was born to do some random task in exactly regular intervals forever! He got his kids to help him, too. He's got two totally adorbs foals, Grains of Time and Spiral Bevel..."
"I'm glad. It's not a one-pony job," Twilight states, trying not to start kicking her hoof. "Anyway... I was hoping you could connect me to somepony else in Ponyville this time."
"Yeah? Who is it? Somepony cool?"
"Uh, probably? I need to get in contact with a carpenter and a lapidary."
"Hmmm... well, Ponyville doesn't have a carpenter by trade. No Square Edge or Cut Corners here. But the Apple family has to rebuild their barn like twice a year, so they've become pretty good at woodwork. Just ask Applejack! I don't know what a lapidary is, though. Is it somepony who drinks a lot of milk?"
"It's somepony who knows her way around a gemstone," says Twilight, keeping her tone level.
"Ohhh!! You can just talk to Rarity! You know, one of her super special talents is finding gemstones! She practically has a hoard of them for her super secret fashion designs!"
"...Huh. That's... somewhat convenient, since I already know both those ponies, but they're both off on tasks. I'll have to catch up with them when they stop back by, but..." She pauses. "I'm not convinced it's smarter to wait."
"Actually, Rarity's at her house right now! I was just checking up on you and Spike, then I was gonna go help her sort through her coats. You wanna come?"
Twilight sits on her haunches and thinks for a second. "...No. Spike does." She retrieves her notes from her table and shoves them into his lap.
"Huh?" he grunts.
"You're going shopping. Specifically, for the gemstones on this list," she says, ripping off the bottom of the top page for herself. She moves to take a coin pouch out of her travel bag lying on the floor, still yet to be fully unpacked. "Here's the cash. Should be more than enough. Actually, let me grab a few hundred bits," she says, and pulls out a few larger coins, shoving them into a second bag. Money isn't going to be worth very much for very long; better to cash in right away than wait until nopony wants it anymore.
"Is this... really the time to buy gems?"
"It is. I'll explain when I have a second. It's convenient that we know where Rarity is, but that doesn't justify putting off talking to Applejack. We've got work that needs to be done immediately; it may already be too late. I'm going to go find her." She knows Spike won't complain about an excuse to see Rarity, anyway. She trots toward the door.
She almost opens it when she reaches it, but something catches: she can't stand it when she's reading a story and a character runs off for some mysterious purpose with hardly a word. Talk to each other, buffoons, she silently begs the page. Communicate. It's an obvious trick to conjure intrigue and get the reader to flip just a few more pages. But what place does intrigue have in real life? Everypony here is going to keep flipping, no matter what. Has she read so many stories that stiff, tired drama runs through her veins, even at a time like this? Is that why she finds herself drawn to a classic protagonist's pitfall? She's spent so many daydreams relishing in how much better she knew she could do in their place. No. Real life doesn't have a protagonist. I'm smarter than this.
"...I want to get out the door as quickly as possible, but I'll say a little bit about why," she continues. "I think one of our smartest moves right now is to get a hold of Princess Luna's magical signature. I need some equipment to perform a measurement of it, so we can possibly use it against her."
Pinkie and Spike exchange a brief glance. "Okay, Twilight! Sounds smart, as usual! We'll let Rarity know it's for a good cause!" says Pinkie Pie.
"...Okay, Twi. Sounds like a plan," Spike agrees. "You wanna just meet back here?"
"Do you have any books left to read?"
"Two more after I finish this one," he says, now standing.
"Then sure. It'll probably take me longer to finish talking to Applejack, so just finish up reading the last few when you get back. If I'm not back by the time you're done... I dunno. Do something productive."
"Like take a nap? It's been ages since I got a full night's sleep."
"Um... yeah, if there's downtime, that's not a bad use of it, honestly. I..."
Pinkie and Spike look at her, expectantly.
"I'm pretty tired, too. I might sleep after I finish the diagnostic."
Pinkie Pie lowers her ears. "Diagnostic? Is somepony sick?"
"...Nevermind. For now, it's time to go. See you later, girls," she says. She lifts one of the two candles from its rest affixed beside the door, and steps out into the night.
Twilight has entered a very different Ponyville than the one she flew into yesterday morning. Even after she blasts alight the modest candle, she can only see a few hooves in front of her face. The lonely moon is nowhere to be seen behind the growing cloud cover, which mangles her vision so thoroughly she can barely read the Golden Oaks Library sign hanging directly over her head. Every now and then, she catches the darting shadow of a weatherpony overhead, sometimes towing a cloud into town from the surrounding hills, sometimes on her way back out for another.
Looking straight ahead from where she stands, Twilight can see eight or nine dull red pricks of candlelight bracing the outline of Ponyville Main Street, but none except her own is close enough to add any definition to the darkness. They sketch a coarse framework of where buildings are and aren't, and offer nothing else. Checking her flanks, she sees quite a few more, but the infrastructure isn't so regular in other directions, and she's not familiar enough with the town to know whether she's looking down another main road, or catching a glimpse of a side street running perpendicular, or locking eyes dead-on with a lit window. This tableau of bleak glow and drab facade is all there is to perceive: the sky is black and featureless, there's not a sound to be heard except a low rumbling wind, and there's certainly nopony else out sharing the view.
But by far the most immediate and sinister facet of the dark jewel Ponyville has become is the cold. It's easily below freezing, which Twilight did not expect this early. How long did we spend reading? I didn't notice the schoolbell ring again... but I could have missed it. She fantasizes about going back inside to retrieve her winter coat, if only it were there waiting for her and not crammed in a Canterlot closet. Just idly standing in the doorway, she begins to feel the numbing pain.
Time to go. There's no way Applejack isn't done talking to the mayor yet, so if I didn't hear from her, she must have gotten the go-ahead. If I were her, I probably would have prioritized salvaging food from city hall, so I guess I'll go see if she's done.
Despite herself, she makes a vague gesture to reposition the coat she isn't wearing, bringing it closer toward her core. It's going to be a long night, she thinks, not for the first time, and not for the last.
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"Rotating through an imaginary angle is scaling."
Fascinating...
"this reference, but knows she's"
Ought that comma to be there?
"craning her neck at an obscene Pinkie angle, for some weird Pinkie reason"
Twilight seems to be adapting quite well. :)
"beside the door, and steps out into"
Ought that comma to be there?
Another good chapter. :)
I feel like you spend too much time on fantasy calculus. I took math in uni and I don't even know if any of that stuff makes sense.
7234001
It's more based in physics, since it is, y'know, physics. Vivification mechanics is built off of a mesh of optics and introductory quantum. I do, in fact, have physics and pure math degrees, but I try to find a healthy balance between the science and the narrative. I'm not writing a (whole) fantasy textbook, but I am equipped to craft a world where there are hints of sophistication and depth behind the magic, and that's what I'm trying to do. I could go much deeper into theoretical magical mechanics, but it wouldn't be especially rewarding for either of us. Complete comprehension is not intended to be required to follow the story, just enough scientific literacy for a rough conceptual understanding.
There's a lot I could say about this, but my thoughts already warrant a much longer post than I really would like to have to write. Instead, I'd like to ask others' opinions on the ostensible legitimacy of the science and on whether the balance I've found is a healthy one. Any thoughts?
7234127 The trouble is that the majority of your audience is almost certainly glossing over the textbook segments. I know how to pronounce the Greek letters, and that probably puts me in a minority of the readership - the number of readers capable of actually understanding your magic system is going to be in the single digits. We know that magic shields work like optics in that they're more permeable to certain colours because that's what we're told, explicitly, but I can't for the life of me explain what it would mean to multiply by an imaginary angle.
There's a reason that even the most elaborate constructed magic systems are based on simple rules and language games, rather than maths and physics.
7234001
It makes sense to me. Though I note the negative correlation between spell power and recharge rate; the more powerful your spells, the faster it takes to charge them up (which has interesting implications, given that Luna is known to be able to throw around really powerful spells - if she can be tricked into throwing something big as a decoy, does that mean she'll be weaker for the next few minutes?)
Here's a longish post I wrote on /r/rational. I'm crossposting it here because I'd really like feedback.
"I'm wondering whether I should try / should have tried to disclaim that complete comprehension of background physics isn't required to enjoy the story, just enough scientific literacy to pick out key points (like "gems can be used to focus magical attacks on a certain target if you know their spectrum"). I'm honestly extremely happy with the background physics in this chapter (I think it makes perfect sense and is a pretty damn nifty system), but I definitely care what readers think too. The goal with these sections is really to give a given reader however much they want to get out of it; if they want to pore over the details, the details are there, but if they just want to skim it and concentrate their attention on the narrative, that's perfectly okay too. Do you have any thoughts on how to make this option more obvious? A literal disclaimer seems a bit tacky and like it would probably have the opposite of the intended effect.
Maybe I could put more effort into exhibiting Twilight summarizing the key points in her head afterwards. Or I could display her written notes.
I also would appreciate feedback (from any reader) on a couple other related things, if anyone is so inclined. Is the balance between background science and narrative strong enough? I try to generously space out info-dumps like this.
Readers who either don't pay especially close attention to the science, or readers who don't claim to understand it: does it seem like it does make sense intrinsically, and you personally didn't form a comprehension? Or does it feel like contentless technobabble? I'm much more okay with the former, since I strive to write a system that makes sense internally.
The vivification system is actually pretty much exactly the same mechanically as the system of photon emission/absorption in our world. The only difference is that you allow complex-frequency "photons", and that's what a pure magic beam is. "Thauma" is a general term for electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and magic radiation (MR) together. Readers who claim a working understanding of this chapter's physics, did any of what I just said fail to come through in the text?
I'm writing a lot more about this than I maybe intuit is wise for an author to do because it's something I want to totally nail. I want a universe with awesome, believable physics as a high priority. Maybe you don't understand all of it, but maybe you don't understand real-life physics completely either (I know I don't). I don't think you need to be a physics student to get enough content from these sections for then to be worth the time. However, I am a physics student, and I've never been especially skilled at emulating minds without my own level of understanding. If I'm not achieving what I'm aiming for, I want to be told. I don't want the level of detail to become an entry barrier. So, I'm taking a lot of care in asking for input and trying to make educated decisions about what's best for the story and my vision for it. Apologies if anything I said here comes across as elitist; I just want to be exceedingly careful. If I drastically fucked up this section, I'd prefer to edit it straight away. But if two similar comments are just a coincidence and the majority of readers have no issue with it, I'd strongly prefer not to do any unnecessary editing. Any feedback at all is sincerely appreciated."
Being an irrational, supersticious heathen that knows basically no science, all od the physics went way over my head. It was mostly a skimming chapter this time.
Characterisation's nice, and it's all really well thought out, but I spent far too much time just skimming to enjoy the story as much as I imagine others have.
I vaguely remember reading a book called "how not to write a novel" and one of the tips that struck out at me was that you shouldn't just write about stuff that isn't relevant. The example given was a portion where a character spent a long time and a lot of pages researching a hobby before deciding "Nope, that isn't for me" and it never being brought up again.
Are you absolutely certain that all that book stuff is relevant? It seems really well thought out, but it also seems like the sort of side-stuff you put in an accompanying blog, or in the annotations, or in an appendix chapter. Unless it's immediately relevant, I'd personally be happy with the footnotes.
It's very hard to know where to skim and where to pick up and stop skimming so I can read what the physics means or what it is going to actually do. Is there any way to make it clearer where I can skip to, to get to characterization and story and opinions and understanding, without missing anything important?
The physics content is interesting, and indeed it looks like much of it is relevant, but I'll be honest- it reads like a textbook. Which admittedly it is, in-universe, but few read textbooks for fun. This also all feels to me like something that Twilight would've already learned- she has been the personal student of Celestia for several years now, and this seems to me like the sort of thing that she'd have covered years ago. It sounds like things that are a foundation to how the magic system works, not something that she'd be reading about now.
My personal suggestion would be to make the primary explanation be from Twilight giving a heavily simplified explanation to another character. Then, at either the beginning or end of the chapter, you could have a separate section that has the textbook material. (Perhaps in a flashback to add a little narrative) That way, you demonstrate Twilight's knowledge and background, allow more personality in the explanation, and have a reason for it to be a layman's explanation rather than a technical one. By making the technical side clearly separate from the main text, those who want to skip it can more easily do so without losing track of the main plotline, while those who are interested in the technical details can still use it. One example of this would be Harmony Theory, which has a short excerpt at the start of each chapter, slowly revealing the nature of that universe's Elements. Another example would be the PMMM fanfic To the Stars, which reveals politics, technical details, and history through its excerpts. Both of these can be read without reading those excerpts, but they add a ton to the worldbuilding.
This chapter also felt like it added too many details at once. We got information about magical spectrum analysis, real and imaginary numbers (which many people don't have a firm grasp on), recharge rates, spectrum distributions, and more. You can't assume that your readers know the technical terms, made all the worse by your ponification of them. I was able to catch Dirac->Lilac from context, and radians->haydians, I think Mewlia->Julia (but that doesn't really make sense if I understood things correctly), but I still don't know what the Trot Song Distribution is.
On to questioning the physics system itself. I will be honest that I did not fully understand the technical explanation. My grasp on imaginary numbers is acceptable, but I don't quite get how you're representing imaginary frequencies. Why do you need to specify it as "yellow in the reals"?
Does this mean that somepony with white magic would have perfect protection? That somepony with black magic wouldn't be able to put up any useful shield at all? There's talk of the RGB complement, but isn't it more an artifact of our vision- purple and red are on opposite sides of the frequency spectrum, and thus would be independent in terms of their penetration? And, more relevantly, if almost all ponies have mostly-full spectrums, how can a gemstone targeted attack be able to cut through shields at will? They'd be noticeably more efficient, sure, but not to the degree that the text seems to imply. You've made your attack hit their weakest frequency, but if their spectrum is mostly full, it shouldn't get too far. And even more fun: can we go outside of the visible light spectrum? Is there a hard cutoff at those frequencies, or does a bit leak through that could be channeled via the gemstone refining method?
I enjoyed reading the physics here, though I can't claim to comprehend all of it. It looks like something I could hypothetically do math exercises with to craft theoretical laser-gems, though, admittedly, assassination techniques described in what reads like a physics textbook give me pause.
So I see a few people complaining about this reading like a textbook but I'm all about this textbook excerpts as world building thing. Pls keep writing.
..I should read The Martian, i hear it's very scifi + hard sci
7240131 To be fair this "physics" is SOO theoretical it's crossed into fields that it doesn't really matter how plausable it is, because it just needs to be plausable in-universe. In an established universe. With drastically different laws to ours. As long as the rules are consistent, i'm on board.
7234127 Do you know any more fiction that indulges in this kind of scientific detail? It's scratching an itch I forgot I ever had.
7319838
A couple things come to mind!
Greg Evan's Orthogonal is a trilogy of sci-fi novels set in a universe with Riemannian instead of Lorentzian geometry. What that means is that the Minkowsky spacetime metric is all plusses instead of three plusses and a minus (or vice versa). This entails that, crudely, relativity has the oppose effect: observers moving with respect to a reference frame experience time slowing down. So you could send a generation ship off into space, and if it goes sufficiently fast, you could arrive a second after you left. In fact, there is no upper speed limit, so you could arrive before you left. Backwards causality is a thing. In fact, you could arrange a state where the arrow of time (increasing entropy) goes in two opposite directions. Another smaller but nifty consequence is that stars leave rainbow trails, because different frequencies of light travel at different speeds.
Not only is the physics of the universe extremely rigorous and thoroughly defined, but the novel itself is basically a generation-spanning account of scientific history. Centerpieces of the story are monumentous discoveries technically explained in detail and organically motivated, and the novel also explains how nonintuitive discoveries meet resistance in academia.
The novel centers around a very nonhuman species with wildly different physiology and social dynamics, too. So in addition to physics, it gives interesting perspectives on, say, natural selection. For example, the species reproduces exclusively incestuously, and lack of genetic diversity seems to be an obvious obstacle to that making sense, but that question is actually eventually explicitly resolved, quite satisfactorily.
It's long enough to be a hefty commitment, but as a physicist fascinated by the historical evolution of science, I couldn't put it down. Oh, and Greg Egan has a website that gives even more technically precise (textbook-flavored!) derivations of Riemannian physical laws, if that sounds interesting. I would be very, very surprised if it weren't the hardest science fiction. ever written, period. More fictional science than science fiction, really. IIRC pdfs of all three can be found through Google.
Another thing I'm reminded of is HyperRogue. It's a game, not a novel, but it's a roguelike that takes place in a hyperbolically curved universe (negative curvature). There are loads of nonintuitive consequences of this, but they're all very rigorous, and the developer is a proficient mathematician. There are also lots of blog posts about it if you don't feel like actually playing.
There are many novel mechanics that simply couldn't be explored in Euclidean geometry. For example, all enemies kill you in one hit (and you them, with exceptions). In Euclidean geometry, this is sort of terrible, because just two enemies at once will almost always wreck your shit. But in hyperbolic geometry, lines parallel to your trajectory are in some sense "longer" (I can't remember how to phrase that precisely?), so if two enemies want to keep up with you, they have to line up behind you. Also, space is curved so much that it's functionally impossible to return to where you came from without tracing your exact steps, which makes feasible a lot of unique environmental mechanics. In one area where the walls shift according to Game of Life-based rules, it's almost impossible not to get trapped immediately in Euclidean geometry, but it's almost impossible to get stuck in hyperbolic, because in some sense there are just so many more ways to go.
A piece of fiction written in this space could be really, really interesting. You could have, say, a bandit fortress that's very close to a town but almost impossible to find without knowing exactly how to get there. This is because the area enclosed by a circle increases exponentially in its radius, not by r^2 (IIRC).
A common criticism (from dumb people) is that hyperbolic geometry doesn't actually affect the game much. This is wrong, and to emphasize that, there's a Euclidean mode that is deeply flawed, unplayable trash.
Hope these sound interesting!
7325833 Thank you very much!
Looking forward to seeing where this is going.
Chalk me up as someone else who doesn't get all of the terminology being thrown around, but I'm at least willing to read into it and pick up the overall points.
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All that you mentioned in the comment made sense. I didn't get that "haydians" meant radians (I thought that it was a name-pun) or that Lilac represented Dirac (it doesn't seem necessary for understanding the example) until notgreat mentioned it. I have a woefully insufficient knowledge of higher mathematics, so while I understand a lot of principles, I don't understand some concepts like how an imaginary number can result in an angle (does (n°)i somehow result in a positive fraction of n°? Is (n°)i an angle in the opposite direction from n?), and I have to look up what a lot of the constants in proofs represent. Those parts make me feel stupid and uneducated, but the rest of it, and most of the stuff I understood once I looked it up, was fascinating.
I hope to learn in the future how gems actually store thaumic radiation, or store the generic energy and then convert it back to the appropriate thaumic pattern, whichever. That part sounds like technobabble, but I really hope you explain how they work as capacitors and memory chips for the spell patterns. ...unless you explained the storage method in this chapter, and not merely the input/output comparisons, and I somehow didn't notice, in which case I have an ostrich's worth of egg on my face.
Edit: Aw, I caught up to the end of the published chapters. Now I'm sad.
I'm up to date? Oh, bother...
I can only hope for updates!
Still have two chapters to go, but let me say it's a blast. I love Xenofiction, a view into an alien mind, when people think differently. Seeing into a mind like Twilight's is new.
I also like the Mathy parts, because they engage my brain in weird ways trying to map real math into them.
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As far as I can remember, it's all real math, I promise! It's just not real physics. =p
This looks promising for a new headcannon...
Well, I just binge read this. I love what you wrote so far, and I hope you pick it back up at some point. :3
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Thank you! I'm so glad you liked it, it means a lot. It's weighing increasingly heavy on me that I haven't continued, and there are so many places I want to go and events I want to recast, they're tearing me up waiting to come out.
But to be completely honest, shit's still not going so fantastically for me, and I've been devoting 99% of my free time to job-searching and portfo-building. Between two part-time jobs with abusive schedules it seems like everything I care about has slipped away. It feels like I'm made some serious progress in the last couple weeks, though, and I'm more optimistic about getting an awesome 9-5 than I have ever been. Shears is one of the things that I'll pick up again ASAP, as it's honestly burning a hole in me at this point. I can't believe it's been so long since I've had time to write, and the story is finally ready to kick into full gear.
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Ok, well, if you need an editor, I can help...
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*makes doe-eyes at*
I can already see a possible plan to end NMM from what's posted, though I didn't see the necessary (but almost inevitably available) ingredient of forensic thaumic spectroscopy…by which Twi goes and observes NMM's spectrum from the destroyed building and builds a killstone off it.
Yes, even with a decent background in physics, the ponification of all these names makes it a much harder read.
(I hope you're up to making more, soon, please.)
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Ah, hm; good point, I think. Thanks. :)
This story is lovely!
It probably can be redone very nicely using fimfiction's (relatively) new
\LaTeXsupport9144904
...Whoah, are you serious? Who is that even for (...aside from me, I guess). I'm going to look into that now.
Although googling "fimfiction latex" was, in retrospect, not the most insightful way to learn more.
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It was announced here. Harassing people with math have never been that much fun before!
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Hey, is this story still going? It says incomplete, not cancelled, but the last update was in 2016...
I'm glad to write to you.I'm translator/writer on Chinese site–Fimtale,one of my friend who shares the same interest with you suggested me to translate your composition into Chinese.In this way,your work can be enjoyed by the other Chinese people.So,I'd like to acquire yourpermission for translating orignal articles(https://www.fimfiction.net/story/300693/20/shears）to(www.fimtale.com)I promise it will be a non-project program.The translation B based on our love to your work.And the achievement is still belong to you.How do you think about it?:)
10 out of 10. It will be included in my top of the best works. I literally cried when I read this.
But starting a story with explanations is a bad idea. HPMOR did not consciously start with rationality. It almost made me stop reading.
It feels too ambitious for it's own good, but as a writer who set up a somewhat similar goal myself, I can relate.
Still, doesn't feels that MLP requires as much technical fidelity, as it was shown here. Its universe, while can be explained in broader terms, too ingrained into cartoon logic. It is an interesting experiment though
While it's obviously work of love, HPMOR for example, at least had a solid relatable basis on it—as well as compelling story based on author's beliefs of how we need to overcome death. Would need to get acquainted with other mentioned fiction though
Did you write anything else since then?