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I'm guessing this discussion may have been done before, but I couldn't see it on a quick trawl...

How do you feel about inventing technology? My last book was not sci-fi but included some sci-fi concepts and is set in 2030. It was surprisingly difficult inventing the technology of the near future although I cheated a little by having viable quantum computers invented in the mid-twenties which changed the world in all sorts of ways.

The important aspect of the technology though was its impact on the story - especially the surveillance available to the authorities and the nature of crime. I think the technology was feasible (although its probably a bit early for quantum computing) and contributed to the world building.

My next book is completely different - it is hard sci-fi with a lot of very advanced alien technology. Oddly enough, I found this technology much easier to invent. Once again the technology is all about the world building but if I had to identify an underlying principle to all of it, I'd suggest convenience. Things that can't happen simply and quickly (by our standards) can certainly be improved with "alien technology".

Some of my favourite books are all about alien technology - when you think about: 2001; Contact; any number of Andre Norton or AE Van Vogt stories; Midwich Cuckoos; John Christopher's Tripods series etc.

How do others feel about this? How have you approached it and what are your favourite technology stories?

Scifi writers do it all the time. There's no problem with inventing new technology. The only caveat I would add, is that it must be rooted in real science, even if only remotely.
But it must sound like science, not magic.

V.M. wrote: "But it must sound like science, not magic."

Couldn't agree more.

I love inventing technology. My last book had many examples. The difficulty comes in how hard sci-fi you go. Space fantasy lets you do whatever and hand wave the same as magic or super powers. I'm surprised you found your hard sci-fi easier to invent tech.

It's a bit more complex than a hand wave. It has to make sense within your world and has to seem plausible. It's alien technology too which I think gives a bit more license. It would probably be harder inventing human technology because we know the scientific basis of where it would have to come from and would need to extrapolate plausibly.

It's no wonder I found it so difficult inventing the technology of 2030.

It's a fun challenge though and very pleasing when you feel you got it right.

In a way, inventing Alien technology is easier that inventing future Human technology in my opinion. Why? Because Aliens ARE different and think differently than us Humans, so their technology will also look and work differently, which gives a few extra liberties to the author.

I also find inventing new technology a fun part of the job of writing science-fiction. It also helps writing fresh new stories with twists that will interest the readers and possibly put your book on a new, previously unexplored path.

Aliens are still subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry but would be likely to perceive problems and arrive at solutions in vastly different ways.

Second FoundationSecond FoundationI'll chime in on favorites:The Mote in God's Eye

Ready Player One
Ender's Game
The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End
The Quantum Thief
Norstrilia
And now reading and really enjoying Codename: Athena - would make a great movie.
Dune of course
More as well but those come to mind off the top,
And Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation- love Asimov.

I always found Asimov rather dry as a storyteller but his world building and technology was outstanding.

Some great books there.

Having that problem now. In a story that spends some time lampooning anthrocentric mindsets, I'm having trouble visualizing basic furniture.

At least I'm remembering to describe body language.

Sometimes my technology is pivotal to the story line, and is there from my first draft; like the computer/cell phone all in rings with diamonds to cool them in Meteor Shooters. There are some things I don't get the inspiration for until I'm on my second draft; like the police shields that emit a visual display that disturbs optical nerves making it harder to aim at the officer behind it. I love thinking about all this, doing the research and writing about it. I know the computer in a ring is inevitable, but I hope to someday inspire an engineer to build something else I described to him. That will be the day I known I've made it as a Sci-Fi writer.

The hard stuff is inventing new technology for a story that happens in the near future (20-30 years away at most), because you then have to justify the realism and probability of such new technology to be invented during the next few years. Take for example 2001: A Space Odyssey, where A.C. Clark grossly overestimated at what rate our space technology would advance by 2001. On the other hand, some technological domains have advanced at a rate nobody could envision at the time, especially computer and electronic systems. Who would have believed you in, say, 1980, that we would have things like ALEXA, the music player that responds to voice commands? So, if you want to 'invent' new technology that would supposedly appear in the next 10-20 years, be careful to base yourself on some sound basic scientific ground.

Thats why i leave my time periods vague.

I spent over an hour reviewing MIT's research on energy production through organic solvents and nanotubes so that I could make up a name for a straightforward pronged device the character used to "overload" an airlock control system. I eventually settled on "Polynano fork."
Sometimes I found that describing how the tech functions become less important than the tech having an accurate name. The characters of the universe live with this technology; it's normal to them. When the manufacturer of the tech gives their product a name, they will make it simple, appealing, and accurate to what the device does,
Sometimes I found it useful to give the tech an acronym, and the characters will butcher that into a word. Instead of calling the VR head gear sensor system by its full name, "Sonification Analysis Telescope," the characters call it SAT.
Another example is 2.7 Kelvin (background radiation) which is the targeted heat production the ships in my universe need to reach so they can 'hide' from radar, but the characters call it Running Two Kay.
The aliens I created used tech that was grown. Everything was organic. Their propulsion was based on the fusion of dark matter. Something we humans hypothesize could be done, but we have no idea how to achieve those results. Because the characters in the story also had no idea how it worked, I never had to explain the inner workings. Although this never stopped me from wanting to know how it worked so I could put it in my worldbuilding notes.

You want one activity that can stimulate your mind into inventing/explaining future technologies? Try sci-fi based role-playing games (RPGs), seriously! When the Game Manager (GM) confronts your character with some alien threat and challenges you to find a solution/remedy to that threat, then you may have to become very inventive and do some real effort at trying to explain to the other players or to the GM how you understood the threat and found a counter to it. One very devious GM I know once challenged the players to explain in their own words how some kind of alien propulsion system worked: not exactly an exercise for lazy minds.

The great Murray Leinster � some of whose books and stories have been reprinted by Baen Books, and a lot of which are free or cheap in Kindle� used to invent a technology as general background to a loosely connected future history, and then have protagonists invent unexpected applications of it.

Occasionally it got a little annoying. In one case, a set of such stories which had different heroes were fixed up into a novel with just one continuing character who kept coming up with new inventions while trying to go about his real job. No one seemed to realize they had a technological genius in their employment.