I am in the middle of writing a science fiction story so off the beaten spaceways that there is not even a close equivalent in any published literature, in-genre or otherwise. This may sound like an outrageous statement to make, but it’s scarily true. Firstly the story involves recently discovered science that I have not seen written about anywhere. Secondly the protagonist is highly unusual. Thirdly the consequential idiom in the protagonists’ language reflects the very unusual setting that is necessary for this story to be set in.
The uniqueness of this story makes it much harder to write than standard tropes. There are no ‘off the shelf’ ideas to grab hold of to include in the story. Everything has to be new and thought out. Each sentence has to be crank-processed to check that it fits into the preceding story context and ratcheted down the shoulders and arms into the fingertips to be typed onto the screen.
Will it get published once I’ve finished it?
Hardly likely. As a friend said, ‘We’re both aware of the types of stories out there enough to recognise when we go places other writers don’t go and have a decent idea or prepared to turn things upside down. Convincing publishers to accept such material is a lot harder because most see it as a bigger risk.’
Yet in the middle of the last century it was almost a necessity in science fiction to have a new idea before it would be published. What has changed?
While any literature can be considered a political statement, the science fiction genre has seen a flood of political issues being debated from topics like the oil crisis of the 1970s onwards, through the climate crisis and datarisation of humans at the end of the last century to the LBGT campaigning of this century. These enrich the genre, but it also means they are taking the publishing bandwidth from new ideas staple of the mid-1900s.
Another issue is the much easier access to the screen. A lot of pre-1960s science fiction had descriptions of places the readers would never be able to visit in their lifetimes. Arthur C Clarke was good at setting an outer space scene as accurately as the scientists knew then, but spicing it up with a sense a of wonder. The reader came as close to experiencing it for themselves as anyone could. These days the scene does that – well at least as far as sight and sound goes – but those are the senses we rely on the most. It is not surprising that literature turned to bring out the impact of other senses like smell, taste and touch, and in the case of science fiction sense of weight and balance… senses that could only be indirectly implied on the screen.
But the screen’s impact went further. Like life in general, we could sense people’s presentational aspects, but not their internal thoughts and emotions. So literature went where the screen could not: they internalised the protagonists. This is immersive literature. It takes space on the page to describe the inner human, which in turn reduces publishing bandwidth for science idea based stories.
The third issue is the headlong rush for escapism from reality. Life has become demanding in different ways and these ways are continually changing. You just need to think about how the tax system has changed over the decades to give you an example. Or how medical care has changed. Or indeed how schooling has altered. Somewhere away from the complexities of real life is a welcome break to refresh oneself. Hence the need for fantasy or its encroachment on science fiction as in space opera. Well, who would use swords, sorry light-sabres, to fight evil when you can travel through interstellar space? Again this reduces the bandwidth for science idea based science fiction.
So there we have it. The three big issues that are eating away at what I would call the core of science fiction: political manifestos, screen stealing and escapism from life’s complexities.
Is there an answer to this for idea generated stories? Well that would depend on how brave the publishing industry is willing to be, but that is an entirely different issue.
Rosie Oliver 