Category: Science Fiction / Fantasy

Long, Long Ago, In a Franchise Far, Far Away

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In the late 1970s a movie studio green lit a modest science fiction/fantasy film called Star Wars that made so much money that the studio and the creative team that owned the rights to it made billions of dollars from sequels, toys and every other monetizing scheme imaginable.

And why did all this happen?  Well, accidentally or on purpose the makers of that original movie tapped into the primal desire of young men (and it was almost exclusively boys and young men) to watch an exciting updating of the young apprentice’s journey to becoming a hero.  Whether it’s young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone or the Marine recruit proving himself on the battlefield of Iwo Jima or the hot shot pilot in a Top Gun movie, every boy (and man) enjoys the visceral experience of seeing the hero prove himself in combat and if he’s lucky enough win the heart of the princess (or in less monarchical times, some pretty girl in general).

And 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm rode that male archetypal fantasy to fame and fortune for almost forty years.  But in 2015 Lucasfilm (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney) launched the seventh film in the Star Wars franchise, “The Force Awakens” and drove a stake right through the heart of that golden goose.  With Kathleen Kennedy producing and J. J. Abrams directing all of that male-oriented story-telling was jettisoned and replaced with “girl-power.”  Kathleen Kennedy gleefully proclaimed that “The Force is estrogen.”  Well, “The Force Awakens” made billions.  Of course, it would have made billions even if it was just an empty screen for two hours.  That’s how much good will had been built up over the course of decades for the franchise.  But the following two films and the various spin-offs like the recent television series “The Acolyte” have completely dried up those wells of enthusiasm that had been produced previously.  The last couple of movies have lost money, in fact hundreds of millions of dollars.  And now the folks at Disney have cancelled a number of Star Wars productions and they’re trying to figure out how to fix their dying franchise.

Well Bob Iger, I’ve got an idea.  First off fire Kathleen Kennedy and all the people who decided to create the monstrosities that caused all this damage.  In fact, don’t just fire them but publicly abuse them verbally and force them to apologize for their heinous sins.  Then make a short trailer video for the next film.

It will consist of all the most egregious scenes from all of the horrible movies you released since 2015 in short snippets in a nightmare montage.  Then we switch to Han Solo in bed waking up from a nightmare and expressing relief that the whole thing was a bad dream.  He then gets up and joins his son, wife and brother-in-law at breakfast and he tells them some of the details of his nightmare and they all have a big laugh at how ridiculous it all sounds.

Then you get some good writers to reread the Arthurian legends and the pulp science fiction stories from the 1930s and you start making money again.

More Than Meets the Eye – Part 3

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The bank branch of the Farmer’s Credit Union and Loan nearest “Grid 19” was open for business on a Tuesday morning when a convoy of black SUV’s rolled up in front of the building and a phalanx of men in dark suits and sunglasses marched into the building and converged on the manager’s office.  A security guard intercepted them and was shown some very high-powered federal credentials that backed him right down.  The manager was handed paperwork that required him to begin providing access to all of his files, account data and any other damn thing the feds decided they wanted.

At approximately the same time a similar invasion was occurring at the headquarters of that bank.  And the man heading up that raiding party was from the Justice Department and he wasn’t interested in uncovering some scam that the IRS would be adjudicating.  He was interested in a conspiracy.  He demanded and received access to all transactional data for accounts that were deemed to be colluding in a price fixing conspiracy to control commodity prices throughout the United States.

The president of the bank was a mild-mannered fellow who was basically scared out of his wits and agreed to cooperate as thoroughly as humanly possible but he assured the official that he had no idea what they were talking about.  His bank wasn’t a high-powered financial behemoth.  They were strictly small potatoes.  And after a few weeks of digging through the bank’s accounts, transactions and files they found precisely nothing.  All of the payments were between the private individuals that bought and sold the farm products.  The bank had no control over prices or quantities.  There was no commonality between these transactions and the bank other than the money passed in and out of their accounts.

The Deputy Assistant Attorney General who was overseeing the investigation read the report he had received from his flunkies and shook his head.  This was not going to be well-received by his boss.  He now regretted having allowed himself to be convinced that his old Harvard Law School buddy Dex Hastings was onto something big with this price fixing conspiracy.  He called up Hastings, “Hey listen, Dexter, make sure the next time you have a tip on a conspiracy theory just call up Morning Joe instead.  You can’t have price fixing when the individual prices are up and down all over the map.   I can’t waste a million dollars auditing some penny-ante flyover-country bank looking for super-villains.  Some of us have to work for a living.”  After that he felt better.  But then he wondered if Hastings would still invite him to his summer party on Martha’s Vineyard.  After that he felt worse.

Dexter Hastings got off the call from Washington and he was incensed.  His friend in Washington had insulted him, his dashboard had that red flashing light which the CEO would slam him for and he still hadn’t gotten to fire Barry Carver for his insolence.  This was turning into a hell of a week.

Just then he received a text to report to the C-Suite.  Arriving, he saw that the executive board was assembled and Dexter nervously entered the board room and took a seat at the far end of the table.  Eventually the matter under discussion was resolved and the CEO, Jim Hatcher turned to him smiling and said, “Dex, we’ve been discussing your project.  It seems that wheat just isn’t going to recover soon enough for us to put your plan into action.  We’ve decided to reallocate the capital to another venture.  We’ve had an offer from Typhon Industries to buy up your entire portfolio in the Midwest.  We’re going to have to take a bit of a haircut to get him to take the whole lot but we’re just champing at the bit to pick up that Korean Biotech firm with the hair restoration patent.  I’ve heard it’ll be worth a trillion dollars over the life of the patent so how can we resist.  I’m sorry we won’t be able use you anymore but you know how these things go; here today gone tomorrow.  But we’ve got an excellent package set up for you, I hope.  So, buck up.  You’ll surely bounce back from this.  In fact, if you’d like I’ll put in a good word for you with Typhon Industries.  Who’s that fellow, Paul Connors?  I hear he’s a strange duck, but any port in a storm, as they say.  Well, that’s all Dexter.  See you around the Vineyard next summer, maybe.”

Paul Connors was sitting at his desk, looking at what liquidations he could expedite in order to make the land purchase from Bay Holdings.  He would be forced to sell an embarrassing amount of gold and platinum group metals on the international markets.  It would necessarily depress the prices but more problematically it would draw too much attention to commodity holdings that would be difficult to explain.  For these metals hadn’t been purchased they’d been mined.  And having to account for his mineral holdings would raise too many questions that he could not afford to answer.

Just then a deeply encrypted link appeared on his desktop.  Opening it he saw the face of his most valuable operative, Cutter.  The bearded face looked only slightly worried which Connors took as good news.  “What’s the word Cutter?  Will the gestapo be busting down my door this week?”  Cutter shook his chin, “No, not this week.  You lucked out.  That nitwit Hastings sicced his equally stupid friend in the Justice Department on the poor guys in the bank.  And since they know exactly nothing about our operation, that’s exactly what the feds learned.  We dodged another bullet.”

Connors smiled weakly, “How many more will we dodge?”  Cutter looked down, “Better assume that was your last break.  We’ve got to have a plan to deal with the day after tomorrow when some bright young man kicks over your Potemkin scenery and exposes your operation.”

Connor stopped smiling, “Do I declare war on the United States?”  Cutter looked at him with a glazed expression and said, “Yeah, more or less.”

More Than Meets the Eye – Part 2

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Barrymore Carver descended like a storm on the research department.  Within an hour he had half of the department digging through the details of the financial records for all fifty of the farms he had failed to take.  By 8 pm he had a systematic database of all the financial and commercial records for each farm for the last ten years.  By midnight he had a pounding headache but he also had a eureka moment that might save his career.  And at 6am he collapsed across his desk with a look of relief on his face.

When Dexter Hastings reached his office at 10am Carver was in his office.  “So, Barry, I hope you have something worth my time.  I have a 10:30 with the HR director to browbeat her for hiring you and I know that should put her in the mood to craft your separation package properly.  What have you found?”

On the office display, Carver queued up a slide deck that he had assembled sometime after 3am.  In his best corporate jargon, he detailed the data he had unearthed.  He demonstrated that each of these farms managed to pay all their bills with an absolutely precise balance sheet.  Each of the accounts managed to match debits and credits down to the penny.  And this occurred regardless of how many separate sales the farmers collected or what random setbacks or emergencies befell them.  And in fact, these farmers didn’t seem to sell their products to wholesalers or even retailers.  They sold their products to private individuals.  And even the prices they charged were constantly changing without any rhyme or reason.

Dexter listened to this exposition for about ten minutes then shut off the display from his desktop and disgustedly said, “That’s enough Barry.  This gibberish is meaningless.  All you’ve shown is that these dirt-poor farmers are dirt-poor farmers barely scraping by.  It means you were defeated by the most pathetic individuals imaginable; penniless yokels.  You might as well go now before I really get mad.”

Carver did something very strange, he smiled condescendingly at his boss and said, “Sure Dexter I’ll go, but if you had a little more attention span you would have learned why you haven’t been able to increase the price of wheat in three years.”

Anger and confusion battled with curiosity on Dexter’s face, “What are you talking about?  What could these fifty farms possibly have to do with the price of a commodity like wheat?”  Carver walked over to Dexter’s desk, turned the display back on and started an animation that showed the fifty farms colored in red geographically on the GRID 19 map and then expanded out to the Midwest and showed hundreds of thousands of additional parcels in the same color, “How about half a million farms?”  Our fifty farms have all their financial accounts in the same bank.  This bank has an additional eight hundred thousand accounts.  Not all of them are farms.  Some are small businesses and some not so small businesses but the great majority of these accounts have the same kind of screwy bookkeeping.  Apparently, none of them make any money worth talking about and yet none of them go out of business.  And I’ve looked at the owners of these businesses.  All of their homes and businesses are financed through this same bank and on paper none of them seem to have enough money to be able to buy a toaster without a loan and yet based on a random selection of social media accounts they all seem to have large families and are active members in all the community groups around them and none of them look like they’re starving.  And when I built up the customer list for our fifty farms every customer is an account holder at that same bank.

This isn’t a coincidence.  This is a highly developed and carefully orchestrated hidden network.  This is a secret society.”

More Than Meets the Eye – Part 1

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Dexter Hastings looked out of his office window of the corporate offices of Bay Holdings, the largest corporate real estate owner in the United States.  He smiled as he looked into the sun glinting off of the mostly empty skyscrapers of Manhattan Island.  Far below he could see the tent cities of homeless immigrants squatting on the once frenetic streets of this former bastion of American prosperity.  He shrugged his shoulders knowing that his escort and armored sedan could get him through any street provocation without the need for him to get involved.  He could reach a heliport or major highway to leave this troubled metropolis if it was necessary for another “demonstration” for the bourgeoise of who was in charge of this country.  At this thought he smiled again and went back to his enormous mahogany desk.

Looking at the quarterly acreage goal he nodded to see that all the quotas were met and the reductions in private ownership of wheat, corn and cattle farms had been reduced to the levels specified in the quarterly dashboard.  Everywhere he looked he saw green lights.  Except one.  Up in the northern quadrant of the Great Plains there was one red light on his board.  What the hell is that!  He clicked the red icon and a file; Grid 19, opened up.  It listed the farms that had been targeted for foreclosure by their local bank.  There were fifty farms all clustered within a radius of twenty miles that had looked like easy pickings last year.  All pressure points for their owners had been applied.  They even got the IRS to audit half of them to see if any fines could be levied against them.  And all the buyers they typically worked with had been instructed to lower the commodity prices they would pay.  Most if not all of those farms should already be in bankruptcy.  But not a single one had folded.  That was impossible.  Sure maybe a few might have found a private source of funds to allow them to limp along.  But all of them?

Dexter muttered to himself, “Something is fishy here.”  He rushed out of his office and barged into a conference room where some of his direct reports were having a meeting about the company team-building trip to Auckland.  He rapped the door behind him and said sternly, “I’m gonna need you in my office now, Barry.  Grid 19!”  And he rushed back to his office with a black look on his patrician face.

Barrymore Carver hustled into Hastings office with a worried expression and stood nervously in front of the huge desk.  He looked surprisingly like a frightened boy standing in the principal’s office.  He knew Grid 19 would be a big problem.  If there was a red light on the dashboard, whoever owned it had to have a story to tell Dexter that included a speedy resolution and a penalty prize to pay for the outrage.  Otherwise, the penalty was a walk of shame to HR and an armed escort out of the building.

“What the hell is going on Barry?  Oh for fifty?  Are you just tired of working here?  Have I brutalized you so thoroughly that you sabotage my dashboard like this?  Talk to me Barry.  Quick!

“Dexter, I worked on this Grid for months I put pressure on these people you wouldn’t believe.  I managed to cut off their power in the middle of a deep freeze.  I even had the government inspectors declare half of their beef cattle substandard.  I did everything but light their fields on fire.  But they made all their mortgage payments they cleared all their supply bills and paid all their taxes.  There was nothing I could do.”

Hastings shook his head, “And it never occurred to you that this wasn’t normal?  When have you ever seen fifty targets fail to succumb?  Never!  Now you are going down to the finance boys and you are going to find out where the money came from and if you don’t have an answer by tomorrow then just go find another job.”

Carver flushed, spun on his heel and took off for the elevators at high speed.  A smile broke out on Dexter’s face.  He loved pulling the wings off of flies.  It was what he was born to do.  He looked down at that red light blinking on his board and the smile left his face.  “Where the hell did that money come from?”

Aspects of World Building – 2

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This installment is a fake.  What I want to talk about isn’t really part of world-building but rather different aspects of writing characters.  But since I’m too lazy to start another series of posts for non-world-building writing considerations I’ll put them here.  And in fact, I might even do that with other posts on other aspects of writing because I am inherently messy and undisciplined.

So, aspects of characterization in science fiction!

Over the years I have noticed that characters in science fiction have become more detailed.  The earlier writers in the 1930s and 1940s often produced stories that were more about some aspect of science driving a plot that didn’t require well rounded human characters.  Even the protagonist might be something of a cardboard cutout.  Sometimes this was intentional because the author didn’t care about the characters.  They were merely a means to an end.  They just had to move the plot along to the payoff.

And sometimes this flatness was more a consequence of the extremely limited abilities of the authors to portray normal human speech and actions.  They weren’t good writers.

But the opposite problem is now the case.  There are “science fiction” authors who write “literary” stories that are extremely character driven and psychologically grounded and lavish enormous attention to the interactions of these characters but which do not produce any interesting plot.  So, if your story takes place in a dystopic or utopic future but all your characters do is discuss their romantic problems, I have a hard time thinking of that as science fiction.

It seems to me that a happy medium is what’s needed.  But that is easier said than done.

In my latest story-writing, “The Sniper,” most of the text is taken up with the plot.  There is dialog and interaction and character development but I wouldn’t say it is sufficient.  There are several relationships between the characters that need further development.  But the tricky part is fitting the required dialog into the storyline.  It’s almost as if I’ll need to have two of the characters pinned down together during a battle for them to have the time to say what’s needed.  I remember in Heinlein’s “Beyond This Horizon” there was some such scene that was pivotal for the exposition of the two major characters’ points of view and the resolution of the plot.  The hard part is making it seem spontaneous and not contrived.  Apparently, there is some art to this writing thing.

It’s funny.  Over the years I have developed a taste for some literary fiction.  Specifically, I enjoy well-written short stories.  What I have been toying with is the idea of embedding one or more literary scenes in an otherwise non-literary science fiction story.  There could be a minor scene going on and two characters, possibly neither one of them very important to the plot become involved in a discussion or an activity that has only incidental importance to the plot but which is inherently meaningful and aesthetically interesting.  Of course, that presupposes that I can come up with something that displays those qualities.

With respect to characterization, I intend to go back into my sniper novel and add more dialog to some of the secondary plot lines.  I need to work on my female characters.  I may even try to get Camera Girl’s advice on these.  She is, after all, a girl, so she may have valuable recommendations.  But I fear she may make her characters too ruthless.  Like all barbarians she is inherently merciless

And I still have to decide what I will do with my AI character.  If her creator dies, I’m not sure whether I want her to survive or not.  I had decided that she would suicide.  But I’m growing attached to her.  And I see her value in future stories.  Perhaps death of a parent can be a maturing experience.  She is rather childlike.

In conclusion, the correct amount of characterization in a story is an indication of the balanced writer.  Not so much that the plot bogs down nor so little that you don’t care what happens to the characters.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.”

What’s in the Air

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This week the Autumnal Equinox occurs and marks the point where the scales tip in the direction of night over day.  It’s subtle.  We still are enjoying days that have 80-degree temperatures, bright sun and the sound of cicadas and crickets.  But all the summer flowers are dead or dying.  The butterflies are almost all gone as are the hummingbirds.  The frogs still croak at night but their rhythm has slowed to a crawl and their hearts aren’t in it.

In a couple of weeks, the wolfbane will bloom and the short days will give way to frosty nights and the windows will close and the meals will feature oatmeal for lunch and soups for dinner.  And I’ll have to send for the guy who tunes up the heating system (may the Fire god Agni protect our dear furnace).

So indoor activities become more important.  I’ve been reading another book on the ancient DNA results.  It is very trendily named, “Who We Are and How We Got Here” by David Reich.  It has many of the results I have previously read but it made some further clarifications or conclusions.  I also watched a YouTube video that Reich was in.  In this video he made a very interesting assertion.  He said words to the effect that it probably isn’t the case that the Neanderthals and Denisovans went extinct.  Basically, they were reabsorbed in the various successive waves of migration from Africa and the Middle East northward after the last Ice Age.  He is of the opinion that the 2-4% Neanderthal genetic content of non-African humans is probably much higher, more like 10-20%.  And a similar case exists for the Denisovans.  And there may even be other intermediate species or races that we haven’t identified especially where DNA doesn’t survive as well.

Also, he clearly stated that Native Americans are a combination of about 1/3 ancient Siberian (sort of a proto-European group) and two thirds East Asian (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese) ancestry that crossed the Bering Land Bridge in three waves.  There is a hint that a small relict population that includes some Australasian traits (e.g., Australian aborigine, New Guinean) exists in the Amazon rainforest but when and how they got there is unknown.

So, there is all this amazing information including the clarification of how the Yamnaya people from the space between the Black and Caspian Seas used the domestication of the horse and invention of the wagon to expand out and replace most of the inhabitants of Europe and Iran and half the inhabitants of India while spreading their language (Prot-Indo-European) to half of Eurasia and subsequently the world.

But the discouraging part of the book is how much hand-wringing Reich does about the fact that these ancient people weren’t feminists and how the conquerors managed to spread their DNA by having children with the lion’s share of the women of the conquered people.  And then we get the genetics of slavery.  Which is a similar story.  In fact, there is a whole chapter called Genomics of Inequality.  And then there is one called The Genomics of Race and Identity.  So, there is a whole lot of hand-wringing.  Oh well.  There is a lot of interesting results.  You just have to read between the whines.

I’m also reading Hans G. Schantz’s book “The Wise of Heart.”  It’s a reimagining of the Scopes’ Monkey Trial with biological sexuality standing in for Darwinian evolution in an environment where transgender activists have passed laws against stating biological reality.  I’m about a third of the way through and I can see he has carefully studied the courtroom nuances that such a legal confrontation would involve.  I’ll provide a full review when I finish.

And finally, now that the summer has ended, I hope to begin watching and reviewing the classic 39 episodes of “The Honeymooners,” the 1950’s sit-com that Jackie Gleason created.  I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this show.  I believe it is the greatest contribution that Brooklyn ever made to western civilization (well, except for, maybe, ringalevio).

And of course, I’m continuing with my outlining of the universe for my epic sf series (WHATEVERITSCALLED).  Believe it or not musing over it actually provides measurable progress in making the choices I need, in order to provide scope and direction to the plot choices I want built into the “world.”  One thing’s for sure.  No xenomorphs in my universe.  Ridley Scott stole that monster from “Voyage of the Space Beagle” but even though that book was terrible it still gave the xenomorph a better showcase.

So, lots of good stuff going on.  Stay tuned.

Aspects of World Building – 1

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As is natural for a man of my era, Heinlein is the exemplar when it comes to science fiction craftsmanship.  But whereas in his youth he was something of a progressive I am a conservative.  So, whereas his earliest “what if?” scenario for his future history was the United States becoming an unlikely Christian theocracy, I’m confronted with the reality of a United States that’s already halfway to becoming a woke oligarchic police state.  Therefore, I’ll use that as the first component of my world building.  Of course, it’s hardly original or surprising.  Maybe it’s even lazy or boring.  But I think it fits.  Besides it can be a one off that’s quickly cured by a revolution that leaves a more interesting and fertile chaos in its wake.

And just as easy to add to the pot is the looming energy drought that is already a part of the daily conversation.  Global warming, green energy, fear of nuclear power; all of these conspire to make the future a bleak prospect for the everyday people trying to eek out a living and raise their families.  Therefore, technology around new energy sources and technologies is a no-brainer.

Now, all that’s good stuff but we need some cooler technology than geothermal turbines.  So, we’ll add in cold fusion (or at least warmish fusion) based on the alleged ability of some heavy metals (platinum group, tantalum, etc.) to produce neutrons under the right conditions.

And we’re going to need a Mars mission I’d say.  Why?  Why not?

What about global unrest?  I guess so.  I’m not all that interested in Asia or Africa, or Europe for that matter, anymore.  I guess I should think about their status to make the story convincing but I’ll leave that alone for the beginning.

What other technology?  Well, biological and genetic should be in the mix.  Maybe the ancient DNA information turns up some anomalies that point to a more complicated hominid prehistory that can be leveraged for some genetic engineering stories.  Maybe some research produces a useful understanding of how other aspects of the cellular apparatus beside the DNA mediate evolution.  Maybe some kind of evolutionary acceleration can be controlled using biochemical stimuli that are not currently recognized.  Maybe this science is unlocked by a genius who wants to change humans.  What kinds of change?  Obviously, intelligence but how about gills to breathe underwater?  Look at all those millions of square miles of ocean.  Maybe make humans photosynthetic.

Artificial intelligence is a for-sure part of the universe.  We need AI’s that in many ways appear to be conscious but whether they actually are I don’t currently know.  I’ll have to see what works.

Extraterrestrials?  I really don’t know yet.  Maybe it’s too early for that.  After all I don’t currently have a star drive.  Maybe I’ll start by finding out if there’s simple life somewhere in the solar system.  Could it be bio-pollution from Earth.  Could algae and tardigrades have drifted from Earth to Mars.  Sure, why not?  And could they have developed some interesting new tricks trying to survive on a freezing, almost airless desert?  Of course!

I used to toy with the idea that the gas giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) might have a stable layer somewhere in between their hot cores and cryogenic surfaces where creatures swim and fight and live and die.  Maybe that would be fun to play with or maybe an ocean inside of one of the Jovian moons would be better.

Okay, I think that’s enough to start with.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 15SEP2024 – Known Space

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You might try fitting your story into Larry Niven’s Known-Space/Man-Kzin Wars Universe. Since Niven allowed other writers access to what is now a shared universe, over 15 books of short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels have been written by numerous authors. The Tech timeline goes from 19th Century India, through the age of fusion reaction drives, Bussard Ramjets, and the 3-days per lightyear Hyperdrive. You could set your story in any period along more that 1000 years of technology. The Kzinti Occupation years on Wunderland are ripe for Resistance stories, as are the post-liberation years of political upheaval as surviving working-class colonists try to overthrow the semi-aristocratic Herrenmen who are descended from the original Fifteen Families in the first colony ships, who claimed all the good farmland, industrial concerns, and control of the government.

Known Space – Wikipedia

How Do You Concoct a Science Fiction Universe with Plenty of Elbow Room?

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Different science fiction writers have produced every kind of world imaginable and for many different reasons.  A very large chunk of writers did this because they wanted a paycheck and they were told that science fiction was the golden way.  And depending on how talented they were, the stories they wrote were more or less interesting, memorable and coherent.

The earliest of these stories were cobbled together based on an author’s understanding of other genre literature.  So, if the writer wrote cowboy stories previously, then we got Showdown at the Betelgeuse Corral or some such thing.  And in the grand scheme of things that’s not really the worst outcome.  I mean, if our western author is a good story teller then the Showdown may be a very interesting space cowboy story.  And who doesn’t like space cowboys?

But if science fiction should include some world-building that actually has something to do with science then an author should go the next stage and make some kind of hand-waving exercise to justify the technology being used.  You know, warp drive fueled by matter/anti-matter mediated by di-lithium crystals that provide the warpity-warpity part (somehow).  Okay sure.

Now you have the means for a story but why is it?  Who is doing what to whom?  And here is where the cowboy story might be just what you want.  Or maybe it’s the Roman Empire writ large or space Arabia with monstrous spice sandworms or the American Revolution on Luna or Vietnam in space or, or, or.  Whatever gives you a good idea for a story with humans or humans and aliens or just aliens.

And if you want the story to be really worthwhile, well, learn enough about humans to write them somewhat convincingly.  Of course, this is going above and beyond.  There were (and probably are) plenty of writers who apparently have never spoken to or even bumped into living humans.  So, they’re forced to base their characterizations on themselves and thereby end up with some truly weird conversations and interactions.

Now, all of these things are on my to-do list for my foray into sf but I want one more ingredient.  I desire my world building to be the basis for more than one story or even one series.  I’m ambitious.  I think of Heinlein building his “Future History” timeline with its torch ships, terra-forming, social crises and advances in medicine and longevity and the first halting steps to the stars.  Now that’s the way to do it.  Build up a framework that will allow for a whole suite of related but not interlocking stories.  Give yourself some guidelines and parameters but leave plenty of elbow room for different events, characters, locales, times and moods.  I want to make sure I don’t paint myself into any corners so I need some kind of overall outline that I’ve thought through.  That way I’ll be satisfied with whatever restrictions are involved.  For instance, maybe in this universe there isn’t any working star drive and maybe there never will be.  Or maybe the sun is dying and my Earth is working out a crash program to send colonists in suspended animation to every solar system that’s been telescopically identified in the hope that at least some of them will survive.  Or maybe a universe where the aliens found us and have put us in a remedial program to become less stupid and we have an enormous inferiority complex that is causing terminal ennui.  Whatever the setup is I’ll have mentally signed off on it.

So that’s what I’m working on (in a sort of retroactive way).  I want to build a world that my sniper story can be nested into.  I like the idea of our real world being reflected in a story with a way of resolving the problems we have run up against.  But I think I have to put a lot more potential in the story beyond the political conflict.  So, I’m trying to look at the big picture and add as many gee-whiz angles to make it more fun.  I think I may add cold fusion to the mix.  I’ve always liked the idea of some research into some of the heavier metals providing some unhoped-for breakthroughs in advanced physics.  Maybe not as drastic as the E. E. Smith trick that gives his Skylark characters a star drive but definitely limitless and elegant power production.  It’s definitely cheating but I’m thinking about it.

But all this big picture stuff is hurting my head so it’s a tough slog.  But I think it’s the right order of operation.