How can I avoid this coming off as poor writing?

I am writing a series, set in an alternate universe in which humans have died out, and the world is populated by sentient electronics.

The main characters are a quad of older smartphones, released between 2010-2016, and as such, I figured 2020 would be a good time to set the work in, with humans having become functionally extinct due to war, global warming, and disease 2 years earlier.

However, the caveat is that these electronics are sophisticated enough to have emotions, interact socially, and consume and extract energy from organic material, and flying cars are normal in this world.

I am considering setting the story in an alternate universe in which technology advanced at a much faster pace, but I also want to be able to explain why films such as Toy Story (whose story was about living toys because of the limitation of CGI at the time), came out at the same time in this world as it did in our world (1995).

How can I avoid my story seeming poorly written?

Have the tech-tree being less hindered by human skepticism and resistance through its history. Allowing it to grow unhindered and allow greater feats sooner since nobody ever fought against them.

I'm planning to have it take place in an alternate universe in which humans embraced new innovations with open arms, hence why flying cars are commonplace, and phones function like robot buddies.

Three thoughts occur to me:

First, most people, I daresay, have no idea that Toy Story had that reason behind its choice of focus; as a result, I imagine that most wouldn't bat an eye at Toy Story existing in

And for at least some of the rest, it may be little more than an amusing bit of trivia that there is this seeming conflict.

Or a source of Wild Mass Guessing as to why Toy Story is unchanged despite technological advances.

In short, I'm not sure that it's something worth worrying about.

Second, you could have technology advance more quickly—but only in certain sectors. After all, not all streams of technology advance at the same rate; perhaps transportation technology surged ahead, but CGI technology did not.

And third, you could have a technological inflection-point—a point at which technology suddenly picked up speed dramatically—that occurs after the last of the movies that you want to include.

Maybe robotics and transportation advanced quickly, but not CGI technology.

Exactly, yes.

Well if i understand correctly, in this story everything basically happened as normal except 2 years ago when all humans died.

I don't think you can reconcile things like having older smartphones with a much faster technological pace. We have no idea how far we are from genuine artificial intelligence, but it seems to me we're even farther from having a smartphone with such AGI. After all, Chat GPT runs on large server farms, it's not something that fits in a smartphone. If that somehow IS the path how we get AGI, it's not going to run on something with vastly less computing power. And if it's something else, then you would have radically different technological progress and radically different smartphones. it would make no sense to specifically have older smartphones from 2010-2016 as those smartphones would then be truly futuristic for us.

The problem with accelerating technological development is that it's going to radically alter how history goes. You can't really go back to 1900, bring tech forward by 20 years and then expect everything to go the same for the past 130 years. The world would look very different.

But also, i don't think you necessarily have to explain this. It depends a bit on what you actual story is. But you could just go with the premise of "humans died and this is the story of 4 sentient smartphones surviving the apocalypse". If you want an explanation, a mysterious ray of energy both killing all humans (or some other way leading to their demise,like it makes Chat GPT truly sentient and nations start a war over it, killing them) and making all sorts of machines sentient is fine. Like, Transformers did the whole "magic energy cube makes robot of regular stuff" and it's fine. Sometimes a story just asks the reader to swallow 1 weird thing for the story to work. Nobody really questions Iron Man's vastly superior armor that somehow only he can make. or why Transformers do literally anything they do. or why teenagers in Jojo look like 40 year olds. or why Devil fruits specifically make the target weak in water.

Does the world of the electronics have to be fully physical though?

That's actually good advice, I do think.

For a comparable example, perhaps look at Questionable Content

@devak I actually really like your idea of an energy ray, I'll use it.

Edited by queenieAG on Aug 21st 2023 at 5:59:21 AM

I think the only thing you have to consider with the energy ray is it's source. Is it something humans created (in their search for true artificial intelligence?), or is it a ray from outer space (An attack? other artificial intelligences liberating their fellow machines? random rare event? an accident?). because that has a lot of influence in what you're trying to say. The human source would really double down on the idea that humans created their own extinction (but in doing so also created new life). the other would be more suited for a mystery or adventure plot -or an inciting incident you can elaborate on in later installments-.

I’ve actually got a better idea. I’ve actually decided the energy ray would’ve given animals hyper intelligence, and the lifespan of humans. This would mean the devices were actually experiments conducted by animals to see if they could make a phone an artificial life form.