What is it that science fiction readers (and writers) like about the genre?\u00a0 Is it that we escape the bounds of the familiar?\u00a0 Does it somehow excite us more if the villain shoots a laser, or a blaster at the hero instead of a 9mm?\u00a0 If the hero is driving an FTL (faster than light) cruiser instead of a BMW does that add to the interest in what he thinks to himself?\u00a0 If an android or a robot murders a politician instead of an antifa terrorist, does it make the killing more psychologically significant?<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s the sense that we can get at the heart of things if we aren\u2019t trapped in the ordinariness of the here and now.\u00a0 If the bad guys have capture not just a subway train but the whole Milky Way galaxy maybe we feel like we are dealing more with absolutes.\u00a0 Stark choices cry out for decisions.\u00a0 In the face of real evil, we will have clarity.<\/p>\n
Or maybe it\u2019s just the desire for freedom.\u00a0 Advanced technology provides the writer with mechanisms that simplify and clean up the story line.\u00a0 If the writer has painted himself into a corner in his narrative there\u2019s no need to re-write the problem.\u00a0 Just pull out a heaping helping of unobtanium and leap over the obstacle with perfect ease.<\/p>\n
Of course that can lead to some cheesy results.\u00a0 Probably 90+% of time travel stories fall into this category.\u00a0 By the end of the story the protagonist is busy murdering a dozen temporal versions of himself on his way to reclaim his life in the here and now.\u00a0 Heinlein did his \u201cAll You Zombies\u201d short story all those years back but I\u2019ve never gotten on board with all that jazz.<\/p>\n
Maybe the thing I like about it as a storyteller is the way it allows you to build the story outward.\u00a0 You can start with a future world that has interplanetary travel and terra-forming and then at some critical juncture an alien race possessing FTL capability can show up and upend this whole fictional world.\u00a0 Or maybe it\u2019s a species that just floats through space at galactic rotational speed but can live indefinitely in vacuum and when it reaches a new solar system it infects these new worlds and eradicates all other forms of life and then moves on to spread to the next system.\u00a0 Or maybe a small black hole is drifting into the solar system and will destroy the Earth and Sun unless some new force can be brought to bear against this irresistible force of nature.\u00a0 Or, or, or\u2026<\/p>\n
Of course, the danger is in pulling too many rabbits out of your hat.\u00a0 You can\u2019t have small black holes, cosmic plagues and FTL aliens showing up all in the same week.\u00a0 At least not respectably.\u00a0 The days of the cliff hanger are long past their prime and unless you\u2019re serializing your book by the chapter, surprise technology needs to be believable and can\u2019t be hauled on stage just in the nick of time.<\/p>\n
The reason for this topic is that I was just considering the other day a subplot where the underground technology that my protagonist possesses could accidentally discover a space ship that was buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.\u00a0 It would allow me to add new facets to the story but I\u2019m afraid it will complicate and confuse the story too much.\u00a0 I think I will leave that for a later story in the same world.\u00a0 But I have to confess it\u2019s fun to toy with what can be done with that kind of addition.\u00a0 It would be amazing.<\/p>\n
Well, another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is it that science fiction readers (and writers) like about the genre?\u00a0 Is it that we escape the bounds of the familiar?\u00a0 Does it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[818,1263,4],"tags":[76,1290,4484],"class_list":["post-32251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-fiction-writing","tag-my-fiction","tag-the-american-archipelago-book-1-the-sniper"],"yoast_head":"\n