Argthtjtr

So, in my post-apocalyptic novel, the world was caught up in an international war (basically WWIII), and all the world's nuclear superpowers launched their warheads and killed much of the global population. Ambient radiation from the nuclear fallout has caused humans to develop supernatural abilities.

And that is not science.

I totally get that radiation just hurts/kills people, it doesn't give someone the ability to manipulate life force or become pyrokinetic like I assert in my story. That's not scientifically possible.

But does my story need to be scientifically accurate or plausible? Will I lose readers because all they can think of is "that would never happen"? Can a story like mine with inaccurate/nonexistent science still be appealing?

Spiderman was bitten by a spider and developed spider-like abilities. Superman is from a different planet and afraid of a glowing rock, even if this human-like creature can shoot lasers from his eyes. The Incredible Hulk is... Hulk...

If you are looking for a non-comic example take a look at the Metro series. Post-apocalpyse after the nuclear war. Everywhere there are creepy mutants wandering around and people are living from pigs and mushrooms in the Moscow Metro. When reading it I wasn't thinking about realism - I was thinking about the interesting story and what the auther did with this unrealistic premise.

I could list dozens of books I have read that don't have a realistic premise. Especially once you introduce superpowers nobody will care. Your readers are not the ones to complain about non-realistic stuff if that is your premise. Nobody can force you to stick to reality.

Heck, I am currently reading something about a great war between dwarves and dragon-riding elves. My dragon army will grill your "physics" :D

There are lots of genres out there that don't care a bit about realism. Post-apocalypse radiation superheroes are definitely in one of those.

Without reading the other answers, my answer is that your premise is fine as long as you set the contract with the reader.

The reader is fine with your premise if you do not promise a science-based story.

Imagine this. Imagine you start your novel with the story of the bush that burned but was not consumed. Then you add in the legend of the man who lived to be 900 years old. You throw in the tale of (one of the greek myths or other.)

And then you say something (trite and contract-driven like): Sometimes truth lies not in the facts, but in the ideas that lie under the storyline. CHAPTER 1.

This sets you up to have a story that is not science-based.

What you do not want to do is promise science and then deliver nonsense.

No, people won't say that, not even full time working scientists (like me). I know a great deal about genetics, I've published academic articles about it. That did not prevent me from enjoying the TV series "Heros" for several seasons. Supposedly their super-powers were due to "genetic mutations" (including immortality, time-travel, psychokinesis, irresistible "command" voice, fire-starting, invisibility, etc.)

That's B.S. to the power of infinity, but I get it, you need an explanation for your fantasy universe, and "Radiation" and "genes" are a stock answer, like "quantum" anything.

Personally, I'd embrace the magic. You are writing a fantasy, and in fantasy magic generally exists without explanation (rules of magic are common, magic systems are common, but where the actual "magic" comes from is just an assertion that something exists, like "life force", or "the force" in Star Wars, or whatever). You can do the same; just use your imagination and make something up. Meaning, the radiation isn't causing genetic mutations, it just released some kind of magic into the world and now some people are learning to use it. Maybe all the magic was used up, and now (due to the nuclear explosions) there is a fresh supply of it.

There is no need to justify your explanation scientifically. But. You must not, under any circumstances try to scientifically justify anything else. In effect, by making a scientifically implausible claim to establish your world, you've shifted from SF to fantasy.

However, fantasy does not have to include unicorns or vampires, or anything else. Just establish your world and get on with the story.

As an example of something very much along the lines of what you're talking about, but even more so, try finding David Drake's "Men Like Us", about a post-nuclear war world, with 3 characters roaming the country making sure that nobody resurrects nuclear power. The trio are ultimately revealed to be immortal, and they got that way by being caught close to a nuclear blast.

So, that's not remotely science, but the story's pretty good nonetheless.

What you're writing appears to me to be "science fiction".

There are at least two kinds.

Hard science fiction:

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy.

Soft science fiction:

Soft science fiction, or soft SF, is a category of science fiction with two different definitions.

1. It explores the "soft" sciences, and especially the social sciences (for example, anthropology, sociology, or psychology), rather than engineering or the "hard" sciences (for example, physics, astronomy, or chemistry).


2. It is not scientifically accurate or plausible; the opposite of hard science fiction.

Soft science fiction of either type is often more concerned with character and speculative societies, rather than speculative science or engineering. The term first appeared in the late 1970s and is attributed to Australian literary scholar Peter Nicholls.

There are good examples of both kinds in the world.

As a reader of SF I've read and enjoyed both kinds (and Fantasy too).

I tend to have favourite authors (as an avid reader if I find a book I like I might read everything by that author).

But does my story need to be scientifically accurate or plausible?

I don't think accuracy is as as important as with "historical fiction" -- I mean of course the world is imagined, even when it makes an effort to be hard-science (perhaps as a way to make it more interesting to people who are interested in science).

Even supposedly-hard science fiction requires some "handwavium" a story which introduces space elevators to earth orbit, or linear accelerators on the moon, introduces a concept but ignores real-world practical difficulties. It's fiction.

If there's not much science in the book then I'd hope there's something else.

Will I lose readers because all they can think of is "that would never happen"? Can a story like mine with inaccurate/nonexistent science still be appealing?

For example one book I read once was like the one you suggested: i.e. a world with mutations. Society was rural/agricultural, no longer mostly-urban, and any mutants were killed. So anyway, there, some children were travelling alone somewhere with a "great horse" -- a huge horse, a cart horse, I forget whether it was mutated or just bred, a big breed, but its being so unusually big meant that the people in the lands they were passing through would kill it if they found it, so they were trying to stay hidden. And I wanted to know more: about the children, the horse, the land they were travelling through, what would happen, and so on.

No.

You can have unrealistic elements as parts of your premise but you need to introduce them to the reader as parts of your premise. Otherwise the reader will not understand your premise and things will go downhill from there.

People do not generally care about lack of realism. What bothers them is not being able to understand what is going on. Realism or verisimilitude just happens to be what readers use to understand what is happening unless the author has already told them that it works different.

So just tell the reader how it works in time for them to understand it when you use it. This is not a scientific explanation of how it works. It is an explanation of how it works in the context of the story. It may include pseudo science or even real scientific speculation but its function is to help explain how you use it in your fictional universe. The rules you, the author, follow using this element when telling the story.

The rule against unrealistic elements is actually that you should not have them unless they are part of your premise and the reader knows it.

Note that if your premise starts with "a fantasy world with magic and elves and dragons and.." you can get away with lots of unrealistic elements.