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

[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. :-)