A lot of the author’s craft is specifically about encouraging far mode. Cf: “a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away”. This is labeled as “suspension of disbelief”. The reading public has been trained to switch into that mode given a few of the standard cues. The game is rigged against you.
However, I also see some softs of fiction, but particularly SF, triggering the opposite: geek mode. A geek is using “near” thinking, which is why he asks questions like: what makes the warp drives glow blue? Geeks thrive amid data amenable to theorizing.
(Corollary: now you see why people who are trying to create fiction get annoyed at geeks.)
What you would have to create is something new, not just fiction that appeals to geeks, but fiction with enough detail and interlaced facts that it tempts every reader to be a geek.
A lot of the author’s craft is specifically about encouraging far mode. Cf: “a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away”. This is labeled as “suspension of disbelief”. The reading public has been trained to switch into that mode given a few of the standard cues. The game is rigged against you.
However, I also see some softs of fiction, but particularly SF, triggering the opposite: geek mode. A geek is using “near” thinking, which is why he asks questions like: what makes the warp drives glow blue? Geeks thrive amid data amenable to theorizing.
(Corollary: now you see why people who are trying to create fiction get annoyed at geeks.)
What you would have to create is something new, not just fiction that appeals to geeks, but fiction with enough detail and interlaced facts that it tempts every reader to be a geek.