Leprechaun Ghost Clowns In Love

Hello. My name is Brian, and I write hard science fiction.

Audience: Hi, Brian.

I fell off the wagon again…

Audience: *Gasp!*

But I’ve been hard SF free since 7:30 this morning.

Audience: *Mumble, mumble*

My mind is clear, and I’m proud to say that I think I can make it through the rest of the meeting without firing up my laptop and pounding out a few passages of my trilogy.

It hasn’t been easy these past few months. With my debut novel on submission, it’s been difficult to concentrate on anything but my craft. Will I  be able to demonstrate to publishers that I can improve? Will I have what it takes to make the edits they require? What if an editor asks me to insert MAGIC into my story?

Audience: *Double Gasp!*

I know. I shouldn’t dwell on such things. But, truth be told, not many successful hard science fiction writers were optimists, now were they?

Audience: *Cold stare*

Not that I, you know, have any interest in going down that road. Not at all. There lies madness, or so we say.

But things work the way they do for a reason, don’t they? Why can’t we use the comprehensibility of the universe to aid our readers in their suspension of disbelief? The stories we tell are so speculative, grounding them in current scientific understanding helps the reader to relate, to own the story, does it not?

Audience: *Double mumble*

Wait, hear me out. It all started when I was in third grade, and my teacher explained that pulsars flash because they spin. I asked if that was because they were light on one side and dark on the other. She thought about it, said that didn’t make sense since they’re basically stars, then told me to stop asking ridiculous questions.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized I had a science teacher who actually had a disdain for science, a disdain for knowing how things actually worked.

Audience: *Nods in unison*

But what if there are readers out there who like that sort of thing?

Audience: *Triple gasp!*

No, seriously. What if there are readers out there who prefer the speculative stories they read to be, you know, plausible?

Audience: *Lights torches and gathers pitchforks*

Why should those readers be left behind? Why should they have to settle for stories about leprechaun ghost clowns when they would prefer something that can happen in a universe that’s realistically extrapolated from our own? Should we not be serving those readers? Should we not strive to create stories in tenable settings that serve to deepen the significance of the narrative impact on the reader?

Audience: *Charges podium*

I brought cookies.

Audience: *Eats cookies*

Anyway, thanks for helping me with my addiction. And thanks for disabusing me of the specious notion that reasonable attempts at plausibility aren’t for the best writers among us.

Audience: Huh?

Has anyone seen my laptop?

Think of the Children’s Children

A number of science fiction authors I deeply admire take on the arduous task of social commentary in their fiction. Though I enjoy reading their work, this just isn’t something I’m inclined to do – at least not at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I know my limitations. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking anything I write will change the worst aspects of modern society. I’m a novelist, not a folk singer.

Besides, if I were to write a story about – for example – an alien race known as the Baynkirs (yeah, I know: subtle) who come from another galaxy to steal all our money, by the time it goes to print, society might have changed to the extent that money is obsolete, and my commentary won’t even apply. I don’t want to date my work like that. I don’t want to nail a novel’s inspiration to a specific period in history that has come and gone.

That may change, however. Society may take a dark turn I can’t ignore, and I may be compelled to write about it in my next novel. Even so, I’m betting you’ll see it on the ten-o’clock news months before my novel comes out.

Adventures in Writing

I’ve decided to try my hand at writing science fiction. Stick around, and I’ll share my writing adventures.

If you read science fiction and have a preference for the harder stuff, then I think you’re going to like it here.

Let the adventures begin.