Writing SF

[desperance]

I've been thinking these last days - triggered largely by papersky's post on Mundane SF - about science fiction and whether I can seriously claim to be doing it, in view of my having less usable science than I have usable Chinese (which is a finite quantity, but an exceeding small one). I'm actually quite comfortable with the work, it just feels wrong or risky to call it science fiction when I can't support or assert that label with any conviction at all. So while I've still been dropping SF into this journal as a description of what I'm doing, I've been thinking of it very much as science fantasy, fantasy of the future, where the paranormal activity can be assumed to be 'science' rather than 'magic'. Of course there are people who would be distressed by this, but hey: they're not my readers, any more than I'm their writer (those people who insist that the science must be paramount in SF, who would rather read a bad story with good science than a good story with bad science? Not on the same planet).

Anyway: that was in my head already. Then I read Jo's post about the Third Artist Problem - money shot: "By the time you get to the third artist, using things like FTL and uploading yourself and aliens isn't speculating or asking "what if", it's playing with furniture in a doll's house" - and I thought yup, that must be me. I like these things, and I can't pretend to understand how they work, so I must just be playing; how could I possibly - oh. Wait a minute...

Because, thing is, what I'm doing - every story I've written so far (yes, yes, all two of 'em) within this SF milieu, they are absolutely asking "what if". It's not about the science in any way at all, it's about what the science would do to the community, how society would evolve around the science, where the rebels would go and what do, all of that. It's why this current short story has grown into a fat novella, just because as soon as I'd started there were so many questions to ask, how people would live with this stuff and how it would affect them.

So then I thought oh, hey, I am too writing science fiction! Cool! Chaz lvs Jo! etc.

Until this morning, when I was lying in bed thinking about it before I actually got up to do it, and then I thought, hang on, isn't that just what I do anyway? Selling Water by the River is all about "what if the Ottoman Sultans had imported magic, to help them defeat an enemy city, how would that affect them? and their enemies?" And you can look further back, all the way - "what if the Samaritans had a psychopath, a serial killer in their midst? How would that play out?"

I dunno, maybe you can reduce all fiction to a "what if?" scenario. Or maybe it's just me. matociquala described my work as "an experimental proof of the law of unintended consequences", so it may just be a function of the way I work. Whatever: today at least, I'm comfortable with it.

And going back to it now; forty thousand words is in view; I shall mount that peak, then sit on my rucksack and slide all the way down, and so get to the end of this. Swiftly and recklessly, striving for grace and style en route but really only wanting to hit bottom. Yes.

Comments

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

Here is my simplified rule about determining what's what so you can decide who's who:

Did it really happen? No? That makes it fiction. Fiction is made up. Making things up is fantasizing. Therefore, all fiction is fantasy. The rest is details.

You're welcome.:)

(It probably doesn't really tell you who's who but I personally get a kick out of lumping every so-called/would-be/self-appointed "mainstream" writer in the world into the fantasy genre.)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I happen to be a fan of that particular line of thought, myself. It really seems to annoy people when you use it as an argument, though. :)

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Ain't it fun?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Evil people, the pair of you. Me, I do tend to divide fiction into the mimetic and the fantastic, one which treats with the world of experience and one with the world of imagination, but that's my theoretical stance. As soon as I venture a toe across a defended border, I lose confidence and come over all defensive myself...

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

The mental image of you venturing a toe across a defended border is going to make me smile for days.:)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*Chaz lvs Pat too*

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Your brilliant story in Glorifying Terrorism was SF, and it didn't seem to me like third artist stuff at all.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*g*

That was My. First. SF. Story! Ever! (Well, in the thirty years of My Glittering Career - my first professional story, let's say.) Thank you for noticing it.

And thank you twice for saying that. I'm just madly insecure, y'know? Scrabbling for a foothold, after a long long time of "can't do that, haven't got the science"...

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You are Cascading Failure Boy.

I like that about you.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

...so I confess, I had to go off and look in Wiki for 'cascading failure', just to make sure it did mean what it sounded like; but yup, that's more or less the thing...

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

It's a bulletproof kink of mine, and you do it so well...

[szandara.livejournal.com]

There are people who may call me a philistine, but I don't like too much science in my science fiction. What I want from the science/magic in my SF/fantasy is internal consistency, reasonable plausibility, and a reason for being there (i.e. if it's not integral to the plot, why put this story in a SF/fantasy setting?). But I want a good story, and I get bored with detailed explanations of how the science works. After all, if your story takes place in 2007 and your character makes a piece of toast, I don't want a digression on how the heating coils in the toaster transform electrical energy into heat.

I particularly like SF that asks: if this technology existed, how would it affect society? Lois McMaster Bujold has done some interesting things in this mode, with the uterine replicator, looking at how various cultures would deal with a technology that took gestation out of the human body. She gives enough detail and description of the replicators that you can picture them, but that's not the focus; her real strength, IMO, is creating compelling characters and plot.

But in the end, I agree with you: all fiction asks "what if?" What if these characters found themselves in this situation, what would they do, and what would happen as a result? Give me characters that feel true and interesting situations for them to react to, and I'm a happy reader. All else is set decoration and costuming.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Give me characters that feel true and interesting situations for them to react to, and I'm a happy reader. All else is set decoration and costuming.

Yup. All o' that.

Also - as a man frantically reshelving his entire house (sore and filthy and exhausted, watching chaos emerge from order all around him) - *icon love*

[szandara.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the movie Clueless when I said that...if you can take Austen's Emma to Beverly HIlls 90210, and it still works....well, it's the story and characters, not the where/when of it that matters.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mm-hmm. Or Romeo & Juliet to the West Side, or...

Lots of examples, first thoughts mostly in film (cue thesis, 'How the Movies Move: Textual Transposition in Film', but for sure it's already been done); but then how many times have people restaged Arthur et al in the near past, the present, the future...? (I'm thinking of Gwyneth Jones, 'Bold as Love' et seq, because those are the only Arthurianesque books that I really like, but I do really really like 'em...)

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree that that's the kind of fiction I like. Also, from a comment somewhere about "Fiddler on the Roof" being a type of science-fiction because it's about how people react to social change, I found myself thinking that most fiction is about change of one sort or another. In the romance genre it often boils down to changing perceptions leading to changing relationships, but I think there's mileage in that thought.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Absolutely: all fiction is about change, or what's it for? You start here, you end there; the story is the journey in between. I used to tell my students that, in the days when people paid to listen.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Help - I am drowning in a sea of cat macros - here http://www.dropline.net/cats/?p=8

Send cynicism quickly.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Don't look at me, hon - I've been a slave of cat_macros for months now. Despite the endless weary snarking (who'da thunk, putting words on cute photos could cause such flamewars? People are weird...).

I can do you cynicism aplenty about politics, with recent elections heavy to the fore; or about this trade of mine, this art, this craft; I could even be cynical about cooking, if I tried. Cats? Uh-uh. No can do. Aww, cute, kitty-cat...

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I see your cat_macros and raise you an "Ihasatardis" community (haven't worked out how to do clever linky thing).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, good grief - not Who macros? Do Not Need...! (Actually, if truth be told, Do Not Want! - I've given up on Who. Gave up at the start of the Tennant tenancy, indeed - just not for the obvious reason, only because I was sooo fed up with Rose's family and that whole soap-opera schtick.)

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

::lives in cat_macros, occasionally coming out to watch desperance venture a toe across a defended border::

[cinderberry.livejournal.com]

Those of us into social sciences like to believe that if the S in your SF is social, your SF isn't any less S.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*g*

[valydiarosada.livejournal.com]

What is science fiction as opposed to science fantasy or speculative fiction? Does it matter? They're all SF.
I suggest that what differentiates the various types of SF from other "what if" fiction, is that there is an important element that influences the story that we don't have now, or didn't have back in the era in which the story is set: e.g. an alternative history where Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo; a story set in the future with a race of aliens with very specific attributes; extrapolating what life might like in 150 years time as a result of the current climate change; in what sort of an environment would draconic attributes a positive advantage; etc. etc. The "what if" would then include (but not necessarily be limited to) having to deal with that important element as well as all the other machinations of the plot and the characters.
I respectfully suggest that reworking Romeo and Juliet as West Side Story, or Jane Austen's Emma as Clueless (i.e. setting them in "now") is lots of fun but not really SF. Taking those plots (or that of the Tempest or the Ring of the Nibelungs) and adding an element of extrapolation from now or a particular point in the past and seeing what might happen, might well be SF. Does it matter whether that extrapolation is based on physics, e.g. a multiphasic widgitotron, or social considerations e.g. arising from us all having to live in underground cities, or politics, e.g. George Orwell? It's all SF.

Just my 2d worth.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

...And a most welcome tuppenceworth; thank you!

*falls into his usual habit of agreeing with everyone else, even if this means he ends up disagreeing with himself*

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

I would agree with this. And I add that in this case, the difference between SF and Fantasy-with-a-capital-F is whether or not the important element is scientifically possible or not.

So an alternative history in which Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo because he was not ill at the time and gave it his full attention would be SF. An alternative history in which Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo because he unleashed his dragons? Fantasy.

The element does not have to be probable, just not impossible. Faster than light travel is improbable but not impossible. A ring that makes you invisible is, alas, impossible. (At least according to our current understanding of physics.)

There's a lot of gray area, a lot of overlap, but I read it all anyway. :-)