Can I hire someone to help with the worldbuilding of realistic sci-fi mechanics?

Question

Basically, I want to ask/hire someone with an understanding of physics for feedback and fact-checking of a mechanic I am developing. Just so that I know which laws I am breaking, and what my system could possibly break in the long term which could also create future plot points.

Currently I am just reading and writing and coming up with stuff while getting help from chatGPT as a copilot. But I have the feeling that getting professional help from someone with a deeper understanding of things would help me significantly. And also for structuring everything finally, because I hate that I am insecure about certain aspects, or just the back and forth which is getting on my nerves.
For example, I think I have a solid idea but lack the knowledge of what it will bring additionally to my worldbuilding, besides the ideas that I need to get the story running. Maybe I change this and that and the reader just knows "oh boy, this will create a black hole and destroy everything" even though it wasn't on my list in the first place because I lacked the knowledge of it.

I know I could just go in and handwave everything but I hate this, and I don't want it to be my normal workflow.
For example, I love novels where the writer just gives hints that don't seem to be important in the beginning, and opens up with stuff later in the story where your brain just explodes because it was always in front of you.

Answer 1

This happens all the time

Authors regularly ask experts, professionals, and people who are in-the-know for insight when writing books. It's isn't just common, it's the norm for professional writers. From your perspective, you're asking for help worldbuilding. From the perspective of everyone else, you're just asking for help.

Since you're specifically looking for help with physics, I'd start with your local college or university. Students are notoriously hungry for a quick-paying gig and a good university gives you access to a breathtaking amount of knowledge. Grab a junior or a senior or, for a bit more, one of the Masters candidates who are helping teach classes. Be sure you're not wasting their time. You should do your best to be specific. Also, pick your audience well. Yes, a physicist might be able to answer (e.g.) an astronomy question, but an astronomer will get you a better answer more quickly (and, possibly, more cheaply). Frankly, leave as much of your story as possible out of the question. If this Stack has proven anything, it's that the story can be really distracting when it actually has little to do with the question.

How much should you pay? I haven't the slightest idea. When I was in college had someone wanted to ask me a question like this regarding electronics I'd have likely taken a five-spot for a quick question, a ten for something that I actually had to think about, and a twenty if I had to step away from my studies to answer it. That was almost 40 years ago. Fair warning.

A warning about ChatGPT. That tech is in its infancy and there's a real problem when neither you, the user, nor it, the purported AI, can tell if the AI is right or wrong. It's really easy to want to trust it — but the dataset it's trained on has a lot of garbage in it. Remember the adage, garbage in....

Finally, just in case you might be interested in turning your hobby into a career, see this related question, which spawned this meta post about its suitability on the site. I'll be curious to see if your question remains open. IMO it should.

Answer 2

Yes, this has been done. It wasn't cheap, but it has been done.

For Chris Nolan's Interstellar, a rotating black hole is included, and he wanted to make it appear as scientifically accurate as possible. Him being Christopher Nolan, instead of just asking Google, he actually went and hired relativists - including Kip Thorne himself, a Nobel Prize winner and contributor to LIGO - in order to actually determine what the human eye would see looking at a rotating black hole's accretion disk.

This did not cost Nolan a small amount of money; I doubt anything Nolan does costs him a small amount of money (see Oppenheimer) but what you're asking about was accomplished. I doubt that asking for professional help designing a single mechanic is worth it: Interstellar's budget was upwards of $165,000,000, and at that point it was probably peanuts to ask Dr. Thorne to come in and do some simulations. Plus, in Interstellar's case, the black hole was a seriously major plot point and was specifically intended to be grounded in real physics. Simply asking a professional about a single a mechanic should either be done for free or not at all.

That isn't to say you can't do it. In fact I know there are several scientists here on WBSE, and for free the people here would be far more than willing to take a gander at your mechanics and make sure they check out physically. That seems much more efficient (in cost, time, and effort) than going to hire an actual scientist to mull over your papers.

Answer 3

L.C.S.

If you're serious about hiring someone as a consultant in this capacity, I strongly urge you to work with an organisation that has experience in brokering these kinds of arrangements. For that, you can hardly beat the Language Creation Society. They specialise in working with artists, devs, authors, etc on making bespoke languages, but I feel confident they could help with what you're asking.

Relevant contact point at conlang.org.

Answer 4

Here are some reasons not to bother hiring someone to help with technical details, as you write, on a semi-regular basis:

For the most popular stuff, people care very little about technical details. Take a look at all of the "A professional XYZ ranks movies about XYZ". Or invite a scuba diver to watch with you any movie taking place underwater. Even in "The Martian" -- who's entire claim to fame was realism -- people laugh at the completely impossible storm on Mars, but at the same time don't care since they understand it's needed to set up the good parts. Many successful writers have flagrant disregard for technical accuracy. Much more important is consistency and a set-up: casually mention there are no purple power lines because Eastern chipmunks love that color, when the good-guy is captured she has an empty can of purple spray paint, and when she escapes after the power goes out she says "took those damn lazy chipmunks forever". I googled "The Expanse realism" and the nicest thing anyone said was it's based on realistic ideas which are then mangled to make the plots work. Most SciFi fans are like the French -- they appreciate if you even try.

Secondly, let's suppose you know less about how things work than the average person. Well, it's standard to have people to read over drafts. The main reason is to catch huge plot holes, or characters acting out-of-character -- things that just stick out. But they're also going to catch blatant technical issues that would take an average reader out of the story (like if you have plants in a vacuum making oxygen).

Thirdly, many authors do research before writing a story -- to get ideas and good technobabble. Read some popular articles about black holes and quasars and various ultra-long-range imaging techniques ahead of time. Take notes.

Last, getting back to The Martian, realistic Sci-Fi is almost a sub-genre and not as popular. If you say your stories are that, sure, readers will notice pointless little screw-ups in the science and won't be happy. But it doesn't sound as if you want to write that sub-genre.