Auld Wulf wrote...
This is worth a read.
One of the things that always confused me with the Mass Effect fanbase is its fetishism of fact, even in a fictional story, to go so far as to say that canon isn't canon. The hatred for the Lazarus Project and Synthesis, in the face of stupendously smart men like Arthur C. Clarke pointing out the fatal flaw with that kind of thinking. This is why I still think that Synthesis goes over the head of the average fan, and incites pitchforks and torches raised in anger with screams of abomination, embracing hatred and fear over erudite understanding.
See, here's a thing: Science-Fiction is fiction. Fiction deals with dreams, ideals, and symbolism. It would be very, very bad fiction if it didn't, and there's already enough bad fiction out there. It's attractive to think of Today being Forever, it's comforting and familiar. It's like the little cardboard box you'll never creep out of, making the average person intellectually a hermit crab. When I look at fiction, I see tales of what could be, what might be, and what potentialities exist. Synthesis is attractive to me because it is a potentiality.
As a fun what if, a little thought exercise as you know I like those, what if all alien life in the galactic community is already wired into an AI in order to achieve complete understanding of their own race? What if the ultimate test of nature is to achieve that complete understanding? What if this is our test? The test of each sapient race. Every planet is fragile, every planet can only last so long with its inhabitants draining resources and slowly killing it. What if the greatest test for any sapient race is to pull together as a whole, with complete understanding of every other person, sharing themselves in a state of understanding, sans suffering?
Whta if that's what alien races had seen time and again? If you can escape your planet by gaining global understanding, and working towards the mutual goal of being spaceborne, then you pass. If you fail, then you won't be around to care about it. Stephen Hawking warns us of confining ourselves to earth. So what if? What if the galactic community is waiting and watching? That is but one idea, and an idea is a powerful thing. Fiction is about ideas. Romance, potentiality, what could we be, one day?
Fiction is a beautiful thing.
Does it matter if fiction isn't mired too much in modern day fact? I'd say no. Star Trek was a hilarious fabrication of pseudoscience and it was well loved. And at times, Star Trek was art. You see, when you ground fiction in fact too much, you're binding it in chains, tying it down with the weight and burden of expectation to be real, you're limiting it, you're telling it what it can't be, and where it can't go. But for fiction to be art, in any way, it has to be free. I believe that... in its own way? Synthesis was art. It's a powerful idea, as part of fiction.
I feel if you don't get that, then you don't understand why we have fiction in the first place. Why we bother to create, explore, or reach for the stars. And if you don't understand that, then what point is there to getting out of bed each morning? Human imagination is powered by ideals, not facts. When a Scientist works on a theory, they're fashioning various could be's and pontentialities, working imaginary numbers, and sometimes even just throwing things at the wall until something sticks. It's the idea that propels us forward, it's the idea that makes us special.
Synthesis was a culmination of everything that had come before it, of everything we'd seen and done, and in the end it presented us with a new potentiality; A symbolic dream of a far-flung future. What drives us is the want to understand and even realise ideas. The worst thing you could ever do is to want to dismiss or destroy an idea. Ideas are what we are.
Here's your problem, there's also
SCIENCE in SciFi. If your universe is not consistent with itself it fails.
When plot events trump the consistency for mere symbolism for symbolisms sake, you are writing **** and need to do it over.
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