Dear All,
Have I told you lately how much I love your works? No? Well, this is a good time as any to tell you so. I’m reading good science fiction and enjoying some good TV show, thanks to your efforts. Thank you, straight from the heart.
Now, can we speak about a couple of serious problems?
Image by Tom Coates
Well, it’s been a while since the last post. Let’s be honest, a lot more than a while. This happens when life is running faster and the days flows away like water, leaving my mind awash with the pressure of what’s going on and what will happen in the next few months.
Relax, it’s about working more. No real problem. I’m more than a bit anxious about getting stuff done in a proper way than other people and sometimes a 48 hours looks like a very nice idea. I think that everybody ’round here knows the feeling. Been there, done that, no more on the subject.
In my latest post (here) I’ve suggested a couple free MOOC in order to acquire more knowledge about selected matters, the idea is to keep myself in touch with the latest development of science and to suggest the same to my fellow writers.
This concept may apply in many different fields of writing, like thriller or mystery, and it’s not only about what will happen tomorrow but it’s also about what is going on today – in order to get the feeling of what will happen tomorrow.
One of the biggest challenges for a writer who wants to write science fiction is to be up-to-date with the most recent developments of real world science, not to mention the constant upgrade of the speculations about the nature of our universe. We all know that a science fiction novel (or whatever format) is not an essay about some peculiar field of science. We also know that without enough scientific (or para-scientific) elements in the story we’re not writing science fiction but some kind of fantasy (that’s not a problem, of course, but we’re talking about sci-fi right now).
No, it’s not a fairy tale. What? No, it’s not about some weird experiment in fringe science. It’s a summary of my first serious try to enter in the English-speaking fiction market, with a few things that I’ve learned in the process.
Here we are, finally to discuss the main drive of this subgenre. The romance, the ever-complicated love story between the hero and some inhabitant of the new planet. It was and it is a pivotal key to the main plot and the source of too many similar subplots, usually motivated by the presence one or more rival. It is also the main factor directed to a larger audience, usually not attracted by sci-fi stories. In the canon, we have the hero, his/her love interest (usually an important member of a local society) and an antagonist (again, some local VIP); can we do anything against the canon? Or this part of the plot simply couldn’t be modified?
One of the key moments in the genre is the arrival of the hero in the new planet; it’s a well-oiled plot device and gives way to a number of actions that will set the pace for the novel. After the arrival, our hero will need to quickly adapt to the new world and discover his/her role in the local society (start of the main quest). In the classic works of the genre, the journey is usually something worth a few lines of description and, optionally, some mumbo-jumbo in a pseudoscientific tone. The same happens for the return of the hero, where the mysterious phenomenon that connects Earth and the new planet is set to work backward – usually after a secondary quest dedicated to retrieving one or more useful objects to make it work.
Let’s say it out loud, the real deal in this genre is the new world. It has to be exotic, flashy, vivid and colorful, always a step further the expectations of the reader. Here we will find something that starts from the heroic fantasy and land somewhere between space opera and burlesque. Characters have to be excessive, any tree or animal ready and willing to attack humans, buildings and technologies have to be all over the top. In the classic version of the planetary romance, logic is something that has been swept under the carpet. So, time for something different. The new world has to be realistic, its ecology coherent, the biome should make sense.
In the previous post (here) I’ve dedicated some thought about a few possible choices for our imaginary hero against the local civilization; in the first post for this series (here), the focus was about the local environment. This post is about the use of the exotic technologies and how our bold character could survive using it.
Angelo Benuzzi 