The concept of Chekov's Gun is fairly well known: it's a philosophy of narrative economy based on the idea that if you have a gun hanging on the wall in a play, it should be fired at some point, or else don't put it there.
I've just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's 2019 novel Salvation, the first in his Salvation Sequence, and now I think that there needs to be an opposite to Chekov's Gun - Chekov's Fire Axe, if you will. Chekov's Fire Axe needs to say that you can't have a crucial prop appear from nowhere.
Without rehashing the entire plot of Salvation, there's a scene where the main characters are gathered together in the spartan lounge of a research station which has been constructed to investigate a crashed alien spaceship. At a pivotal moment, one of the characters kills another character with a fire axe, thereby revealing that their brain has been replaced with an alien organism.
Okay, wait wait wait. A fire axe?
Fire axes are a pretty specific tool. Their functionality is based around the need for firefighters (or people fighting fires) to chop through doors or other barriers, smash windows, or cut holes in walls or ceilings for ventilation. Why is there a fire axe on a futuristic research station - which is in a vacuum - without a piece of wood in sight, or any possible benefit to chopping through the station walls?
So, Chekov's Fire Axe: IF YOU NEED A SPECIFIC PROP TO ACHIEVE A PLOT POINT, IT SHOULD ALREADY EXIST OR LOGICALLY EXIST IN THE SETTING.
I'm sure that Chekov would approve.
- Sid
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