Using the Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON III, which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared!
Many readers love real science, or just the appearance of real science, in their science fiction. It is no small challenge to create compelling literature that also triggers a scientific sense of wonder. Panelists discuss how to do it right.
Panelists:
Catherine Asaro: best-selling science fiction writer
Lezli Robyn: Editor, writer, Essayist, Galaxy’s Edge magazine
John Ashmead: editor, Moderator
Eva L. Elasigue: no idea
Derek Künsken: SF writer
Maquel A Jacob: new SF writer
I love real science – it’s why I taught it for the first thirty years of my career as an educator and why I’ve taught classes such as “Writing in Science, Science in Writing”.
My love is biology, and among my favorite current SF writers are Julie Czerneda (herself a research biologist at one time); but I also love David Brin’s work (an astrophysicist who has an uncanny ability to create weird and believable aliens); as well as others too numerous to name who write scientifically.
The group also pointed out some of the pitfalls of what is sometimes called a “hard science fiction” story.
Included on this list are things like, “Future science is fun!” (I just finished a short SF story that utilizes a type of space travel suggested to me by the physics of “Miguel Alcubierre Moya, a Mexican theoretical physicist known for the proposed Alcubierre drive, a speculative warp drive by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel.” I postulated that it might allow Humans to reach into something called Anchorspace by changing the geometry of space by creating a wave that would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. This allows the ship to “anchor” briefly, to extend a “sail” into real space to aim the ship using stellar winds in real space to turn and aim for the destination in real space.)
Other comments suggest you “need to have a sense of what the editor is like”. As well, know your target market. Lezli Robyn noted, “ANALOG stories are solution oriented; ASIMOV’S are consequences oriented.” She had also mentioned that writers need to THINK about the implications of their science. For example, she is unable to see, but points out, “Does my mind see more than my eyes?” That is a fascinating question, certainly one that a writer could seek to deal with in a unique – and sensitive – way. And if you are afraid of writing about a character who is unable to see, keep in mind the blog I posted here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html
She went on to iterate that to create an effective hard science story, you needed a “big objective goal; the materials the characters need to requisition or have on hand – and if there’s no catalogue handy to order the parts from, the characters need to create NEW mechanisms to get the job done.
Finally, make sure to weave the science into the story – “Hard science fiction has LEGENDARY infodumps!” There was quite a bit of laughter, but if you write hard SF, you know how easy it is to get sucked into the world-building part of the writing…and forget the characters and their plight!
Recommendations of science-based fiction from the group: A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine; PERIHELION SUMMER by Greg Egan; THE QUANTUM ROSE by panelist Derek Künsken; THE ALGEBRAIST by Iain M. Banks. They offered another by Steven Barnes, but I would highly recommend LION’S BLOOD, and ZULU HEART, the first two novels of an incomplete series. The classics DUNE by Frank Herbert, and ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card were also included. I’d also recommend the meticulous world building of Peter F. Hamilton’s several worlds…
Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU
Included on this list are things like, “Future science is fun!” (I just finished a short SF story that utilizes a type of space travel suggested to me by the physics of “Miguel Alcubierre Moya, a Mexican theoretical physicist known for the proposed Alcubierre drive, a speculative warp drive by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel.” I postulated that it might allow Humans to reach into something called Anchorspace by changing the geometry of space by creating a wave that would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. This allows the ship to “anchor” briefly, to extend a “sail” into real space to aim the ship using stellar winds in real space to turn and aim for the destination in real space.)
Other comments suggest you “need to have a sense of what the editor is like”. As well, know your target market. Lezli Robyn noted, “ANALOG stories are solution oriented; ASIMOV’S are consequences oriented.” She had also mentioned that writers need to THINK about the implications of their science. For example, she is unable to see, but points out, “Does my mind see more than my eyes?” That is a fascinating question, certainly one that a writer could seek to deal with in a unique – and sensitive – way. And if you are afraid of writing about a character who is unable to see, keep in mind the blog I posted here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html
She went on to iterate that to create an effective hard science story, you needed a “big objective goal; the materials the characters need to requisition or have on hand – and if there’s no catalogue handy to order the parts from, the characters need to create NEW mechanisms to get the job done.
Finally, make sure to weave the science into the story – “Hard science fiction has LEGENDARY infodumps!” There was quite a bit of laughter, but if you write hard SF, you know how easy it is to get sucked into the world-building part of the writing…and forget the characters and their plight!
Recommendations of science-based fiction from the group: A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine; PERIHELION SUMMER by Greg Egan; THE QUANTUM ROSE by panelist Derek Künsken; THE ALGEBRAIST by Iain M. Banks. They offered another by Steven Barnes, but I would highly recommend LION’S BLOOD, and ZULU HEART, the first two novels of an incomplete series. The classics DUNE by Frank Herbert, and ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card were also included. I’d also recommend the meticulous world building of Peter F. Hamilton’s several worlds…
Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU
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