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Somebody Else's Problem field
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Somebody Else's Problem field (SEP field) is a fictional technology from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. It is a cheaper and more practical alternative to an invisibility field. A similar concept has been used in other British science fiction.
An SEP field is a generated energy field which affects perception. Entities within the field will be perceived by an outside observer as "Somebody Else's Problem", and will therefore be effectively invisible unless the observer is specifically looking for the entity. This effect is greatly heightened if the entity within the field is already unexpected or out of place. The primary example of this was given in the third book Life, the Universe and Everything, when a spaceship built to look like an up-ended Italian bistro utilizes an SEP field to land unobserved in the middle of Lord's Cricket Ground. Another example occurs when the aforementioned ship's field is extended so that the characters fail to notice the fact that they can't breathe or the fact that the asteroid that they are standing on doesn't have enough gravitational force to hold them down, and thus are able to breathe and stay grounded. It should be noted that an SEP field won't render an object invisible if it's expected to be there, and an SEP-cloaked object may be noticed out of the corner of the eye.
The SEP field requires much less energy than a normal invisibility field (a single torch battery can run it for over a hundred years) due to the natural propensity of people to see things as Somebody Else's Problem. This is very close to the idea suggested by Terry Pratchett (who has often been compared to Douglas Adams): People don't see whatever they are sure can't be there.
In the novel, there is a character mentioned to try and create an invisibility field, and given a year, (with a bet on his life) he could render an entire mountain invisible. It's said he spent so much time fiddling with an invisibility field which never worked, that at the very last possible second, he did the most drastic last-minute work ever seen by the known Universe, and by the deadline, the mountain was gone from vision. However, he lost the bet shortly afterwards because there was a curious new moon discovered around the same time. Had he instead painted the mountain pink and erected an SEP field around it, he would probably have won, as most people don't expect to see a pink mountain, especially when someone claims it invisible (or absent).
The Ninth Doctor also referenced something similar to this in the Doctor Who episode "Boom Town". Mickey ask if the Doctor is bothered about leaving the TARDIS in the middle of Cardiff, to which he replies: "You put a mysterious blue box slap bang in the middle of town and what do they [humans] do? Walk past it."
The Tenth Doctor, in "The Sound of Drums", rigged three TARDIS key necklaces with a field that makes people not notice the wearer as long as they remain inconspicuous. This is also used in Human Nature, The Family of Blood and Utopia on a watch storing the biological information of The Doctor (Human Nature & The Family of Blood) and The Master (Utopia) to stop their human counterparts from unintentionally returning to Time Lord form and being detected.
A similar concept is shown on the BBC programme Torchwood (a spin-off of Doctor Who) when Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper rise out of the pavement in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff on Torchwood Three's "invisible lift" and are completely ignored by the people around them due to what he describes as a 'perception filter'.
While not employing any technology, but rather a codified otherness, the inhabitants of London Below in the mini-series Neverwhere appear as tricks of the mind to the general, above-ground population. The main character, Richard Mayhew, lives a normal life until he is briefly entangled in the affairs of London Below. After that, everyone forgets him and everyone fails to register his existence, with the exception of his best friend and ex-fiance who have simply, completely forgotten him. When people are forced to acknowledge his presence, or that of any of the rest of London Below's population, it is with a brief annoyance and then selective amnesia.
