A Quote by Edward M. Lerner
Many a fine SF story uses science or technology merely as backdrop. Many a fine SF story presumes a technological breakthrough and explores its implications without attempting to predict how the thing might actual work.
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Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative.
Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it's doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors.
Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.'
There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?
SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative novels such as 'The Battle of Dorking' from 1871 showed how SF's trademark 'what if' scenarios could easily encompass warfare.
Anything can happen in SF. And the fact that nothing ever does happen in SF is only due to the poverty of our imaginations, we who write it or edit it or read it. But SF can in principle deal with anything.
I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.
I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.
I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody.
Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed - now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down.
An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table.
What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.
Your light is seen, your heart is known, your soul is cherished by more people than you might imagine. If you knew how many others have been touched in wonderful ways by you, you would be astonished. If you knew how many people feel so much for you, you would be shocked. You are far more wonderful than you think you are. Rest with that. Rest easy with that. Breathe again. You are doing fine. More than fine. Better than fine. You’re doin’ great. So relax. And love yourself today.
I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.
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