[ I wrote this on 9 September 1981. I just rediscovered it. Here is a copy of what I wrote, unchanged, long sentences and all. I am going to re-read the book... ]
Notes on the use of stereotypes within a genre.
Science fiction is distinguished from fantasy by the convention that nothing in the science fiction story should contradict what is now known; and, that irremovable contradictions should be explained in a suitable manner. For example, it is now known (or is at least an orthodox belief) that no object or signal can go faster than the speed of light. In a science fiction story, a spaceship either is restricted to travelling slower than the speed of light or is required to use some subspace or warp drive or other literary device in order to exceed the Einsteinian speed limit. Fantasy stories, on the other hand, do not require literary devices that explain contradictions with reality as we know it.
Unfortunately for a science fiction writer, what is known keeps changing. Old books said that the planet Mercury had one side facing the sun all the time and the other side facing away, just as the moon has one side facing toward the Earth all the time and the other side facing away. But Mercury is not like that. In the recent past, Mars has gained riverbeds and craters, and lost most of its atmosphere.
A work of science fiction can be dated by the alert reader who knows the level of science and technology from which the writer invented his ideas. A story of Mars, for example, that has big craters but no riverbeds must have written in the late 1960s after the craters were found by one spacecraft and before the riverbeds were found by the next. Science fiction stories age faster than wine.
But some science fiction writers don't like to become outdated, so they locate their stories away from earth science and technology in a backwater of the universe about which we know nothing, for example, in a Lost Colony. A space colony that has lost contact with Earth for several centuries might be presumed also to have lost records of all those inventions and discoveries that were made after the author finished the book.
In The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, Earth is hardly remembered. Instead, there are two lost colonies and a third mentioned in passing. Since the Earth is out of the story, the author can arrange her technology in a fashion that would seem unlikely if Earth were there to provide technological assistance. Moreover, the technologies that she does describe are not likely to become dated for some years.
The lack of good biotechnology, such as advanced genetic engineering, can be explained by lack of contact with Earth and lack of research in the lost colonies. If the colonies were in contact with Earth, then, along with their spaceships, one might expect a similarly advanced biological technology. The technologies that the author cannot invent or cannot fit into the story can be excluded under the pretext that they were 'lost.'
Although hydrogen fusion and interstellar travel are currently not possible, the technology that Vinge describes is not thought to be impossible. Much of the lower level technology has already been developed. Suspension of disbelief is not too difficult.
A second practical requirement faced by science fiction writers is the need to explain the background. The writer of a detective story set in the USA in the 1950s can assume that the reader knows that gasoline power automobiles were a usual mode of transportation at that time and that the villain could not have travelled from the site of the murder in San Francisco to the site of the alibi in New York in one hour and thirty-three minutes. The readers of a science fiction novel make no such assumptions and the writer must lay out the environment and the technology. One technique to have the dumb side-kick to whom every thing must be explained. In Outcasts, our heroes come from one lost colony to a second; our heroes are not dumb but they don't know any thing about the second colony, so as they learn, the reader learns.
In addition, the author uses straightforward narrative: the first two pages of the novel are a set-piece description stating that there is a fusion powered, slower than light interstellar craft travelling from one colony to another, about which they know nothing but have high hopes — and, as they enter the planetary system of the second colony that there is something strange going on ... they are being intercepted by people using a relatively primitive technology.
Having faced the technical requires of a science fiction novel, the writer can get on with the stereotypes.
Note: the people in the novel do not have either fast or cheap interstellar travel; but the advanced technology is a cheap interplanetary travel; the backward technology is expensive interplanetary travel. This affects the plot.
The Outcasts of Heaven Belt,
Joan D. Vinge, 1978,
A Signet Book, New American Library,
ISBN 0-451-08407-1