The info-dump is one form of exposition, in which authors inform their readers of the important background to the action and plots of their books. An author loads a large amount of information (usually to describe something that sets their world apart from the real one) in a way that is counter to usual conversation or narration. This is a way of quickly and completely filling in background information, usually to furnish an elaborate plot. It’s easy to recognise — you might get the feeling that for a couple of pages the narrator of your book or your character’s voice has been replaced by a dreary university lecturer or an overenthusiastic infomercial spruiker.

A lot of science-fiction authors do this, and writers of television medical dramas are prone to it, too. Basically, instead of saying something like “I’m about to walk through the HoloPort Door,” and letting the audience work out  themselves through context and later information what this means, one character will go on a monologue, in speech or in thought, explaining something that in the world of the book or  movie they both know fairly well.

“I’m about to walk through the HoloDoor, T’akus, and as you well know this special hydraulic seal is made of the rare intergalactic element Siliconza-a, which is only found on one of the planet B52’s twelve moons. God knows what would happen if the hydraulic seal failed!  I guess we’d be sucked out into space, which is filled with intergalactic dust from the Decade Spaceship War, since that war was fought with spaceships powered by lint from the bellybutton of the Planet Zorg’s space-worm crop.”

Cue a shuddering halt and a dramatic hydraulic door failure.

If you’re unlucky enough to have read The Da Vinci Code then you’ll probably know exactly what I mean. Of course, not all information dumps are as heavy-handed as this example and Brown’s handiwork. There are a lot of great novels that contain a large amount of background and history. The trick is seamlessly integrating the things your audience needs to know into the fabric of the story. When that isn’t done correctly, it’s very obvious.

I think Patrick O’Brian supplies his audience with background information particularly well. His books, set on Nelson’s fleet during the Napoleonic wars, are loaded with interesting nuggets of information, and you can jump right into the history. The historical realities are also cemented, I think, by O’Brian’s strong characters: times change, but people don’t, and reading about Aubrey and Maturin’s adventures is a delight, mired as they are in a rich world of historical fact.

We have HMS Surprise in the shop at the moment.

- Agnes.