Robust tech - nuts and bolts in the SF universe

I always have a problem believing in SF worlds where all-seeing tech never breaks down.  There are books where rulers know everything that happens throughout their vast empires every minute.  There are powerful spymasters whose faultless tech always tracks down the rebels.  The problem is, I can't recognise them as human socieities.

I've always struggled with hard SF that focuses only on the tech, that doesn't consider who uses it, or  the impact of that tech on the lives of its users.  And some writers seem to be so in love with the shiny gizmo they've invented that they don't work out the consequences of using it fully.  All too often that tech goes on-line and it works flawlessly.  It always works, and sometimes without any visible signs of a maintenance schedule.  I just don't buy that, not if humans are involved in building it.

You only have to watch the news for a while to notice that humans are always taking short-cuts.  We don't store things safely and they explode, or we don't maintain our tech and it breaks down at a critical moment.  Things blow up regularly, or catch fire.  And very often at the end of the lengthy inquiry we find human error has been involved in causing the accident.  So, unless we can design systems that can prevent humans from taking short-cuts, I think our tech will always go wrong.

The other thing that isn't often featured in SF is basic tech like nuts and bolts.  It seems that many writers find them too boring for their brave new worlds.  But there's a good case for saying that nuts and bolts would be vital in some SF settings, like in the undeveloped wild world of Deon my characters in Genehunter inhabit.  

This week I've got to the point in the story where two of the guys are trying to repair Aris's airscooter after it ditched in the river.  I describe a scene where they take its innards apart to dry out the wiring and components, and try and work out what's shot and what's not.  They're working with nuts and bolts, and components that they can take apart and repair.  They're on a world with no repair shops, so they either fix the tech, or it doesn't go.

I think that's a more realistic portrayal of tech on a frontier world.  In such places it's the self-reliance of the settlers that's going to help them to survive, along with the type of tech they can fix when it goes wrong.  They're going to need to be able to take apart those nuts and bolts.