In Space No One Can See You Hide the Evidence: Crimes in Space
Trish Matson: journalist, physicist
Valerie Valdes: writer
Carl Fink: instructional designer (creates, delivers materials to learners including paper materials like handouts, manuals, eLearning technologies, multimedia for all educational institutions and adult training)
Kat Clay: crime and horror author
I am a recent convert to the Mystery genre. I stumbled into it originally through reading the Hardy Boys as a kid, though I never really read many more than that. Asimov’s R. Daneel Olivaw’s stories fascinated me; but I didn’t really fall into the mystery genre until I read my first Longmire mystery a few years ago.
Once I did that, I found I was hooked. In fact, I find a novel dull if there isn’t some essence of mystery in it. It can be the “big idea”, as in Jack McDevitt’s ACADEMY series (where the nature of the mysterious Omega clouds is the backdrop for the series) and his ALEX BENEDICT books (Benedict is an antiquities dealer whose job often rubs up into mysterious disappearances…) or the origins of PERN, of the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN series, as a colony of a space-faring civilization that met with disaster – and coped.
McDevitt led to Connie Willis’ books, and Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN novels, which always hinge on some kind of mystery.
Which eventually led me to the realization that LIFE is a mystery and every SF novel I have in my library has a mystery in it. My favorite series by my favorite author (Julie Czerneda) is the SPECIES IMPERATIVE books; the entire series depends from the unknown answer to two questions, “What created the Chasm, an expanse of dead worlds filled with the ruins of alien civilizations? Living worlds are dying again, how can it be stopped?”
I’ve finally started to experiment with including mystery in my writing. I DID write a science fiction mystery for kids…in 1997. “Mystery on Space Station Courage” was published in CRICKET: The Magazine for Children. It was even included in supplemental materials for an elementary school reading program.
But, as you might notice, I haven’t played around with mysteries since then – though “Road Veterinarian” is a…sort-of mystery in which an experimental, genetically engineered organism that digests and replaces asphalt roads, decides to cruise internationally all by its lonesome, which might spark war...The problem is WHY...and they bring in an innocent veterinarian to figure it out. (ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, September/October 2019)
Valerie Valdes: writer
Carl Fink: instructional designer (creates, delivers materials to learners including paper materials like handouts, manuals, eLearning technologies, multimedia for all educational institutions and adult training)
Kat Clay: crime and horror author
I am a recent convert to the Mystery genre. I stumbled into it originally through reading the Hardy Boys as a kid, though I never really read many more than that. Asimov’s R. Daneel Olivaw’s stories fascinated me; but I didn’t really fall into the mystery genre until I read my first Longmire mystery a few years ago.
Once I did that, I found I was hooked. In fact, I find a novel dull if there isn’t some essence of mystery in it. It can be the “big idea”, as in Jack McDevitt’s ACADEMY series (where the nature of the mysterious Omega clouds is the backdrop for the series) and his ALEX BENEDICT books (Benedict is an antiquities dealer whose job often rubs up into mysterious disappearances…) or the origins of PERN, of the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN series, as a colony of a space-faring civilization that met with disaster – and coped.
McDevitt led to Connie Willis’ books, and Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN novels, which always hinge on some kind of mystery.
Which eventually led me to the realization that LIFE is a mystery and every SF novel I have in my library has a mystery in it. My favorite series by my favorite author (Julie Czerneda) is the SPECIES IMPERATIVE books; the entire series depends from the unknown answer to two questions, “What created the Chasm, an expanse of dead worlds filled with the ruins of alien civilizations? Living worlds are dying again, how can it be stopped?”
I’ve finally started to experiment with including mystery in my writing. I DID write a science fiction mystery for kids…in 1997. “Mystery on Space Station Courage” was published in CRICKET: The Magazine for Children. It was even included in supplemental materials for an elementary school reading program.
But, as you might notice, I haven’t played around with mysteries since then – though “Road Veterinarian” is a…sort-of mystery in which an experimental, genetically engineered organism that digests and replaces asphalt roads, decides to cruise internationally all by its lonesome, which might spark war...The problem is WHY...and they bring in an innocent veterinarian to figure it out. (ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, September/October 2019)
Science fiction and mystery or thriller have to be intimately woven together. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be much written along the “how to” lines, so I guess I’ll have to take the bits and pieces I can find and paste them together into a thoughtful whole!
1) The mix of SF and mystery has to be even – IOW, you can’t just tack a spaceship on to a murder. (Or make the murder victim a robot…though that’s what I did in “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”. An AI is killed by someone, and the police are confused. Of course, so is the suspect. They don’t remember anything about the murder, though there’s a suspicious gap in their memory where the details should be. I subbed it to all of the top markets…)
2) There’s got to be a legitimate mystery. As in: “the protagonist is trying to find out what happened during a night he blacked out, the location of a mysterious star stone, and who wants it enough to leave threatening or bizarre notes…” As in number one, you can’t just tack a mystery onto an alien world or in a starship.
3) The reader should be one step behind the investigator. “...became a war criminal at the age of six; investigates crimes for the Diplomatic Corps; tough, hard-nosed bureaucrat; more investigator than fighter; uses her intelligence to save the day, and they follow the mystery maxim that the reader should always be one small step behind the hero, but only one step behind; witness interviews, juicy red herrings, and a final reveal right out of Holmes.” Clues should be placed and discovered naturally. Convolution here isn’t welcome.
4) Create a place that is distinct and where the crime could occur. “gritty, hard-boiled detective story; sense of place you get from this story is as well realized as the characters living in it.” As always, the place should be a character as much as the Humans (or aliens as the case may be!)
1) The mix of SF and mystery has to be even – IOW, you can’t just tack a spaceship on to a murder. (Or make the murder victim a robot…though that’s what I did in “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”. An AI is killed by someone, and the police are confused. Of course, so is the suspect. They don’t remember anything about the murder, though there’s a suspicious gap in their memory where the details should be. I subbed it to all of the top markets…)
2) There’s got to be a legitimate mystery. As in: “the protagonist is trying to find out what happened during a night he blacked out, the location of a mysterious star stone, and who wants it enough to leave threatening or bizarre notes…” As in number one, you can’t just tack a mystery onto an alien world or in a starship.
3) The reader should be one step behind the investigator. “...became a war criminal at the age of six; investigates crimes for the Diplomatic Corps; tough, hard-nosed bureaucrat; more investigator than fighter; uses her intelligence to save the day, and they follow the mystery maxim that the reader should always be one small step behind the hero, but only one step behind; witness interviews, juicy red herrings, and a final reveal right out of Holmes.” Clues should be placed and discovered naturally. Convolution here isn’t welcome.
4) Create a place that is distinct and where the crime could occur. “gritty, hard-boiled detective story; sense of place you get from this story is as well realized as the characters living in it.” As always, the place should be a character as much as the Humans (or aliens as the case may be!)
5) The cop, sleuth, mystery solver, has to have a clear, clean voice. “When reaching for a detective story, it’s always the sleuth’s voice that draws me in and keeps me turning pages. I like my detectives quick-witted and cynical and, if I’m being honest, more than a little unlucky; not cynical; a hustler with a heart of gold; gritty, hand-to-mouth life; peace and determination.” My kid mystery solver does have a clear voice; I can’t remember the sleuth in “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”, though it might be an AI…hmmm.
6) The mystery has to be personal. In one of my favorite Miles Vorkosigan stories, “The Mountains of Mourning”, the main character, at this point a newly graduated officer, has to solve a murder. But it’s not just “some guy”…it’s an infant; and she was murdered because of a cleft palate. Even in the recovering world of Miles, such a birth defect is easily repaired…in the city. It doesn’t help that he LOOKS like he has a radiation-induced birth defect…
7) The main character has to act as if it’s a mystery. “Constantly questioning the angles of the case; becomes more embroiled in the criminal plot, the stakes raise on a personal level; ‘ticking time-bomb’ (sometimes literal in the SF/Mystery/Thriller); internal dialoging; shades-of-black view of the world.” This harkens back to the first key and the fifth – the mix of SF and mystery has to SOUND like a mystery to the reader. While it doesn’t have to be a professional, amateur sleuths have been overdone in the “simple past”…they would be hard to believe in 21st Century America, let alone on 24th Century Mars. Our Earthly societies have continued to grow more and more complex. You never read of “armchair sleuths” solving real mysteries…(https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/28/give-us-a-clue-inside-the-world-of-amateur-crime-solvers-and-sleuths, https://www.websleuths.com/forums/
8) With those commonalities though, SF mysteries are able to deal with current and even future mysteries – which would never have happened BEFORE. “Most detective novels deal with humans who have become monsters–and in SFF, this is often literal. But does PK Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" play with the idea that the monster might be more human than we’re comfortable with, which is what ultimately sets it apart?”
9) On the other hand…murder is murder… Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Retrieval Artist series have mysteries that are just that. Whether Humans murdering aliens – or not and still incurring the death penalty (for them or their children…), sapient beings that were living and are now dead is, by definition, murder (and others would consider the killing of ANY living thing as murder (fruitarians only eat things that have fallen from a tree and are, in fact, dead already…)
So, now what do I need to do? Re-reading “The Murder of AutoTech #47369” and see what I did wrong, and have some ideas...but they biggest need seems to be clarify the who and what...
References: https://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/booksf/mystery/sfmysteries.html, https://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-science-fiction-mystery-books, https://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-mystery-books/, https://www.wattpad.com/299996219-how-to-write-mystery-thriller-mixing-scifi-and,
https://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/mind-meld-favorite-sf-detectivemystery-novels/
Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
6) The mystery has to be personal. In one of my favorite Miles Vorkosigan stories, “The Mountains of Mourning”, the main character, at this point a newly graduated officer, has to solve a murder. But it’s not just “some guy”…it’s an infant; and she was murdered because of a cleft palate. Even in the recovering world of Miles, such a birth defect is easily repaired…in the city. It doesn’t help that he LOOKS like he has a radiation-induced birth defect…
7) The main character has to act as if it’s a mystery. “Constantly questioning the angles of the case; becomes more embroiled in the criminal plot, the stakes raise on a personal level; ‘ticking time-bomb’ (sometimes literal in the SF/Mystery/Thriller); internal dialoging; shades-of-black view of the world.” This harkens back to the first key and the fifth – the mix of SF and mystery has to SOUND like a mystery to the reader. While it doesn’t have to be a professional, amateur sleuths have been overdone in the “simple past”…they would be hard to believe in 21st Century America, let alone on 24th Century Mars. Our Earthly societies have continued to grow more and more complex. You never read of “armchair sleuths” solving real mysteries…(https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/28/give-us-a-clue-inside-the-world-of-amateur-crime-solvers-and-sleuths, https://www.websleuths.com/forums/
8) With those commonalities though, SF mysteries are able to deal with current and even future mysteries – which would never have happened BEFORE. “Most detective novels deal with humans who have become monsters–and in SFF, this is often literal. But does PK Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" play with the idea that the monster might be more human than we’re comfortable with, which is what ultimately sets it apart?”
9) On the other hand…murder is murder… Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Retrieval Artist series have mysteries that are just that. Whether Humans murdering aliens – or not and still incurring the death penalty (for them or their children…), sapient beings that were living and are now dead is, by definition, murder (and others would consider the killing of ANY living thing as murder (fruitarians only eat things that have fallen from a tree and are, in fact, dead already…)
So, now what do I need to do? Re-reading “The Murder of AutoTech #47369” and see what I did wrong, and have some ideas...but they biggest need seems to be clarify the who and what...
References: https://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/booksf/mystery/sfmysteries.html, https://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-science-fiction-mystery-books, https://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-mystery-books/, https://www.wattpad.com/299996219-how-to-write-mystery-thriller-mixing-scifi-and,
https://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/mind-meld-favorite-sf-detectivemystery-novels/
Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
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