Basic Information
Super-Science is the science and technology of the future. It's things we believe are possible, but we just don't have the tech for yet. Super-science is just ahead of the curve, it's something an inventor, super-spy, or mad scientist might have access to, but not really the sort of thing you can just pop down to Radio Shack and buy.
For example, a computer is mundane technology. A computer so big it fills a continent, so small it fits under your fingernail, so accurate it's been given control over every aspect of our lives, or so fast it can model a human brain in real time would be super-science.
For contrast, a computer that uses N-Rays and Tachyons in it's processor would be alternative science, as would a computer that proves some abandoned, unfeasible or impractical concept of science, such as a computer that runs a Tipler Cylinder.
A computer that uses occult principles in its processor or that controls a magic item would be magitek.
A computer made of clockwork or minecarts and pressure plates would be bamboo technology.
If there appears to be no computer, but we hear it's voice coming from the air around us, or if the computer materializes a cup of tea (earl gray) in our hands, that's Sufficiently Advanced Science.
If the computer claims to be able to do all these things but later forgets it can, or if it just contradicts the basic building-blocks of physics in gleefully ignorant ways without stopping to consider the consequences and ramifications, that's Hollywood Science.
A computer that becomes self aware and initiates the Robot War would be Mad Science.
Examples of Super-Science:
- Artificial Intelligence (at least the self-aware sort that's presented in TV and movies)
- Cybernetics (though again, this does exist, in limited forms like pacemakers and artificial limbs)
- Exotic Matter - aka matter with negative mass
- Flying Car
- Genetic Engineering (the end products of genetic engineering, however, have infiltrated our food supply and our gene pool)
- Jet Pack
- Nanites / Nanobots
- Laser weaponry (at least, portable battlefield weaponry)
- Robot (as with AI and cybernetics, this is available with modern technology, but it's not like what the movies have trained us to expect when we hear "robot")
- Star Drive
- Stellar Megastructure
Eventually, everything on this page will become common enough to show up on the technology page, if we don't destroy ourselves and/or our planet first.
Game and Story Use
- Twenty Minutes Into The Future, these items may be accepted/expected parts of life.
- Certain character types may have access to items the rest of us have never heard about. For some, super-science may be their one trick, the thing that defines the character.
- Sufficiently Advanced Technology is indistinguishable from Magic.
- After The End, bits of super-science and technology will be left amidst the wreckage. See Post Apocalyptic Decay for a discussion of how long it will remain usable.
- Super-science often overlaps with, or provides the, Phlebotinum.