Lies and Logistics

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Details, details. Essay. 1000 words, 5-minute read.

Image: https://www.dla.mil/About-DLA/News/News-Article-View/Article/1404556/replenishment-at-sea-aboard-uss-san-diego/

Lies and Logistics

By Ray Tabler

I saw a post online about how the US Navy manages resupply of ships, while at sea. There’s a lot of high-tech, specialized equipment involved. Fuel hoses, pallets zip-lined from ship to ship and slung below helicopters, and the like. What surprised me, though, was that once all the supplies were aboard, the crew lines up and passes boxes hand-to-hand from pallets to the multitude of storage spaces all through the ship. It’s similar to a bucket brigade, a box brigade.

No multi-million-dollar package handling system, designed and built by some defense contractor. Just a big, long line of sailors passing cardboard boxes down into the bowels of the ship, one after the other. Makes sense. Gets the job done, quickly and efficiently. Probably builds moral and crew solidarity as well.

For a writer, this type of obscure detail can be absolute gold.

There’s an old joke that writing fiction is just telling lies for fun and profit. In a very real sense that is true. But telling lies is a difficult art form, whether for fun or profit. Salting your lies with actual, real-world details helps the reader to glide past the fictional parts without noticing you’re making it all up as you go along. And it paints a richer background for the story in the process.

Not only that, but the contours of reality folded into the story often provide opportunities to advance the plot. What better time to introduce a conspiracy than when the entire crew is busy stowing boxes of supplies from a replenishment? How many sailors need to be involved? The best spot to divert an unnoticed box full of contraband to a secret hiding place is likely at a bend in the corridor, where the line of box passers up stream and down won’t see the switcheroo. How far up the chain of command does this scam go?

Useful details don’t have to be military in nature. In the movie My Cousin Vinny, the prosecuting attorney, Mr. Trotter, tries to trip up Miss Vito while she’s on the witness stand by asking her abut the ignition timing of a specific model of automobile engine. She fires back with a lot more technical minutiae concerning the 327 cubic inch engine with a 4-barrel carburetor than he bargained for from a young lady. The exchange reveals a wealth of information about each character’s backgrounds and personalities.

Image: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechmycousinvinny4.html

Stories can turn on obscure details, meticulously planted early on or casually strewn when the reader isn’t paying attention. In the movie Diehard with a Vengeance a dump truck driver’s unexpected knowledge of our 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, supplies invaluable information for John McClane. Viewed objectively the reveal is a bit clumsy and overly fortuitous. But, the film has done such a good job of drawing you into the action by that point you don’t even notice until after it’s all over.

On the other hand, barely-noticed nuggets are often used to help construct a rich backdrop for the tale being told. The myriad, tiny, meticulous details of Mark Watney surviving alone on Mars do not necessarily need to be related in such microscopic granularity in order to tell the story. But they set the chronicle apart by rubbing the reader’s nose in just how narrow the margin the marooned astronaut is working with. The difference is akin to a flat, painted theatrical backdrop versus a multi-level, movie set, which craftspeople have lavished with largely invisible features.

Science fiction and fantasy authors in some ways have an easier time than conventional writers. They don’t have to sift for usable background details. They can just make them up on the spot. Spacecraft design constraints, alien cultures, otherworldly ecologies are all at the service of your plot, as long as the known laws of physics are respected. Likewise for magical systems in fantasy tales. The down side is, you have to make it all up. And it’s a really good idea that the worlds conjured are internally consistent. To be sure, franchises like Star Trek and Lord of the Rings have laid a lot of groundwork which established well-known tropes. That simplifies the task immensely. 

The Harry Potter books are crowded with barely-mentioned gems that enrich the wizarding world and make it seem almost real. There’s no reason that wizard wands have to be made of specific types of woods, tailored to the soul of each wizard. Or that wizards would suffer from the same irrational attachment to the model of broom ridden as we in this world to our automobiles. Harry’s world is all that more believable as a result though.

In my novel, The Diesel-Powered Starship, a faster-than-light star drive won’t tolerate an electrical circuit. Which requires that colonists have to start over at a pre-electrical technology on each new planet. At least until they can mine the copper on that new planet to draw wire for new devices not previously exposed to the drive field. A diesel engine is the only practical way to power the starships. Of course, such a situation demands entirely new paradigms to accomplish the tasks without electricity. Genetically-engineered bacteria to convert diesel exhaust back into breathable oxygen and bioluminescent bacteria to light the ship interiors. Nineteenth century spectrometers and printed catalogs of stellar spectra to navigate between stars as if the stars were fusion-fired lighthouses. Pneumatic and mechanical control linkages to steer the diesel-powered ship. And an entire interstellar economy to grow the engineered bacteria, extract and distill the diesel fuel, build and maintain the ships, engines, and equipment. The result is a stellar community, grittier and more mechanical than most science fiction tales.

This level of world building isn’t always necessary. It’s a judgement call, up to the author. The background of the story can be as minimal as an abstract painting, a few, bold strokes, and plenty of white space for the viewer to fill in on his own. Or it can be as complex and chocked with obscure, evocative elements as Rembrandt’s Nightwatch. And when you’re building that world, don’t be surprised when the story and the setting interact in unexpected ways, changing each other as if they had minds of their own. Honestly, that’s half the fun.

END.

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