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Rated: E · Article · Scientific · #2337657
Speculations from four Big Unsovled Problems in physics
I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true.
         Ernest Hemingway


Wheft.  (n) (nautical) A kind of streamer or flag used either as a signal, or at the masthead for ornament or to indicate the direction of the wind to aid in steering.
         Webster’s online dictionary


Verisimilitude is the appearance of being true or real.  It's a fundamental feature of realistic fiction.  It applies to characters, plot, setting, and all other elements of the ficttional world. It's what Hemingway was talking about in the above quote 

I can't stand watching shows on cable TV where they claim to discover evidence about things like space aliens or bigfoot. Understand, I don't have anything against these shows, and I'm willing to concede that things like space aliens or bigfoot could very well exist. I just don't  find the shows or their purpotted evidence credible. When they insist that a bulrry photograph or a single, unsubstantiated eyewitness report is evidence, it just makes me change channels.

On the other hand, I enjoy Star trek in all its incarnations, even though I know that the faster-than-tight drives featured in the Star Trek universe are just pseudo-science jibber-jabber.

The difference between the two is something called the wiling suspension of disbelief.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the first to use the phrase in 1817 when he said that in his poetry he tried to infuse
a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure ,,,that willing suspension of disbelief
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (13 March 2020). "from Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV". Poetry Foundation.

The idea is even older.  For example, in Book II of Acadmica in CE57, Cicero  mentions adsensionis retentio, or "holding back of assent."  Both Coleridge and Ciciero were writing about poetry with a supernatural element, but the concept applies more broadly to all fiction. 

The idea is that when a reader starts a piece of fiction, they begin with a willing suspension of disbelief.  Readers know that what they are reading is fiction, which by definition means that it's not real.  The Coleridge quote is important, because it implicitly places the burden on the author to infuse their work with "sufficent human interest and a semblance of truth" to support that "willing suspension of disbelielf." 

Verismimilitude is how authors reinforce that initial willing suspension of disbelief.

I can enjoy Star Trek because, while I know warp drives are impossible, I'm willing to believe in them for the sake of the story and the characters.  All those UFO and bigfoot shows on the Discovery Channel, though? They present themselves as factual, so I watch them with the same skeptical eye, the scientific eye, I use when viewing evidence.  There's no "suspension of disbelief," and the presentation reinforces that it's supposed to be factual.  It's worth noting that Mr. Gene, my partnner, enjoys those Discovery Channel shows, but he's watching them as fiction.  My problem is I can't believe they are intended as fiction, so I can't watch them.

That willing suspension of disbelief can be fragile.  It's based on both the "human interest" and "a semblance of truth."  If fictional story breaks either of those too severely, it can break that willing suspension and, thus, break the fictional dream playing in the readers' minds.  A famous example is in Star Wars, where, at one point, Han says he made the Kessel run in "twelve parsecs."  That sounds real fast, right?  Except that a parsec is a measure of distance, not speed.  It's like saying I made the "Oklahoma CIty" run in "twelve miles" when the real distance from Tulsa is more like ninety miles.  It's nonsense.  It's a glaring error, and an example of using a "sciency-sounding" word in a way that makes no sense.  And, no, Lucas didn't "fix" his mistake later by implying Han knew a shortcut. It's an obvious mistake and, while it doesn't ruin Star Wars for me, it certainly makes me cringe.

On the other hand, the faster-than-light drives in both Star Trek and Star Wars provide, if you squint hard enough and want to believe, a sufficient semblance of truth to keep you connected with the story.  Unless, of course, the screewriters get too specific do something stupid like saying a parsec is a measure of velocity.

I tend to have a personal problem with verisimilitude when it comes to fantasy, especially when things like magicians or fairies lurk in our everyday, real world.  Heinlein wrote Magic, Inc. and related stories, but the underlying basis was, if you squnted hard enough, the various mysteries of quantum mechanics.  He never explicitly mentions the quantum world, but it's implicit.  In addition, the commercializaiton of magic in his fictional universe is entirely credible, which helps. 

Recently, I've been thinking about writing a slipstream story, set in part in our modern world, but with fantasy elements that include something like "the veil" that separates the real and unreal as well as adepts who are simllar to magicians.  But, I kept running into that verismimiltude problem.  If I don't believe those things are possible, I'm going to have a hard time making my readers believe in them.  But then I encountered an emerging theory in physics about, of all things, dark matter.  It's brand new, less than a year old, and could fizzle out.  But, if you squint hard enough, it might give me a pseudo-scientific basis for the things I need for my story. 

Basically, what I want is some kind of signal flag to stick in my story to mark the boundary between the real world and the slipstream world.  That's where the wheft of the titile comes in.  I admit, I'm borrowing from my friend Raven Author IconMail Icon and her awesome new novel Rain, where magic floats in the weft, a term she borrowed from weaving.  I like the sound of both words, but I like the idea of a signal flag, too.  Anyway, both weft and wheft have a nice, surreal sound to them, so it's a good choice for a surreal, slipstream story.

Most ot the rest of this newsletter is about dark matter, that new, emerging theory, and four BIg Unsolved Problems in physics.  If you're not interested in sciency-stuff, you should probably skip to the last section on the wheft, a free-wheeling romp of imagination about things an author might do with the ideas that underpin that new theory.  The basic concepts, being based on sound principles, should be viable even if the theory itself fizzles.

Two Kinds of Matter

Dark Matter

The Big Bang

Dark Energy

Hubble Tension

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

The Wheft          

         
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