Subscribe to WIRED Magazine  Why Alastair Reynolds Doesn’t Do
Star Trek Physics  Wired: The book contains some invented
terminology such as “chinging” and “voking.” What’s your
approach to coming up with terms like that?  Reynolds: I’m
always a little bit cautious around invented terminology,
because so much science fiction is off-putting to the
uninitiated. You open up the first page, and it’s full of all
these made-up words. So I try to keep a lid on it if at all
possible, but at the same time, I’m thinking about a society in
which these fairly novel technologies are fairly commonplace. It
wouldn’t make sense for the characters to say, “I used the
remote telepresence technology to communicate with so and so.”
They’d have a more economical way of saying that.  So what I
usually do, I just put placeholders into the text, and then at
some point a better idea might occur to me — or it might not —
and I go back. I have a big whiteboard above my desk, and if I
have even a half of a good idea I write it down on th