If All the Stars Were Suns: the Layman’s Sci-Fi

Mia of Miamor has written a lovely post saying we should write more science fiction. She says in the comments that she’s working on two SF short stories at the moment. I’d sure love to read them when they come out :D

Her post just got me thinking. A long time ago (years, more like), I was asking the Phil SF and F mailing list why they think science fiction isn’t a hit in the Philippines. I think I said something along the lines of “maybe it’s because science instruction here sucks” and people presented some convincing arguments to the contrary.

Now that I’ve done a lot more thinking (and talking to Mia and other SF enthusiasts), I’ve come to another conclusion. It’s not that our science instruction isn’t up to par… it’s just that SF is inaccessible. There’s little enough SF written by literary writers, and even less in pop media. While we do have mecha anime, some sentai shows and Zaido to look forward to, shows that actually emphasize scientific phenomena and discovery were historically few and far between.

Why don’t we have more of it? What are we scared of? Let’s set aside the commercial concerns of the media bigwigs for the moment… why don’t those of us who have the time and the resources write more science fiction? Why do we tend to say “I’d like to try writing science fiction/crime fiction/magic realism, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to write it well.”

Why do we even say things like that at all?

I took the title of this essay from a visual fantasy work, Elfquest – anyone else here a fan? My favorite character in the original Pini series is Skywise, the smart and loyal advisor-best friend-sidekick. He’s the dreamer of his tribe, fascinated with the stars and the possibilities that lie outside the borders of experience… though like his tribemates, his priority is survival, and preserving the traditions that have helped their race live on for thousands of years.

In one of the earlier stories, Skywise’s savage tribe encounters another clan of elves, who live in the desert and are more sophisticated than their woodland cousins in many ways. While speaking with an elder of the desert elves, Skywise is told that the life-giving sun is actually a big star. He looks up at the sky and asks “Wouldn’t it be something… if all the stars were suns?”

Skywise isn’t a storyteller. Neither is he a scientist. He wears a lodestone around his neck and calls it a magic stone, not understanding why it always points north. His concept of scientific fact probably ends with the knowledge that rubbing two sticks together somehow produces fire.

But he took the idea of a star giving life to an entire planet and ran away with it. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get a person to dream.

I think there are a lot more Skywises in this country than we can imagine. There are a lot of people who only need a small push to start thinking up wild ideas that are easily convertible into speculative or science fiction (see, for example, the young person who thought up the vampire who could only drink blood from virgin octogenerians, mentioned by Kenneth). But somewhere between the conceptualization of an idea and the actual writing of it, something gets lost.

Do we believe it’s hard to write sci-fi? I believe writing science fiction is hard – but I don’t think writing realistic fiction is any less difficult. When you want to write about the life of a young painter living in modern-day Paris, say, you build the story in your head first, then you go out and do research. What constitutes life in modern-day Paris? How much does one need to earn in order to live comfortably in a modest bachelor pad? Would being a painter earn enough, or would one have to be a prolific and popular painter, and would a painter need side jobs to pay the bills? What kinds of side jobs are available in Paris to young painters who are possibly unskilled in any other trade?

And so on and so forth.

You build the story first, then you do your research. If you need to do research at all. But if you have the resources at your disposal, why wouldn’t you? Why would you, as Mia had said, “settle for half-heartedness”?

If I may confide something at this point, I finished (what I consider to be) a mundane science fiction story last month. It’s the first SF story I’ve finished in a while, and I just struck while the iron was hot, so to speak – I didn’t have a lot of reference materials open while I was writing, although I did take an occasional break between paragraphs to check out some easy facts.

When the story was done, I read up a bit on the concepts I used. I wrote a number of friends whom I knew had scientific and medical backgrounds to confirm some of my ideas. Of course I was embarrassed to waste their time with my silly little questions, but I was truly grateful that they all wrote back – only to say that my major ideas were implausible XD; (To be fair, some of them said “anything’s possible,” and that was rather encouraging.)

So now I’m in the process of revising my story. It may take a while before I finish. And well, it may never find an audience, but I’m nonetheless proud of the effort I spent researching on it. I learned a lot, and I was able to exercise presenting scientific facts without breaking the pace or tone. I may have actually failed in that too, but w/e XD

What I’m saying is – you don’t have to be a scientist to write a science fiction story. I don’t even think you have to be a science fiction fan to finish an SF story… although exposure to the genre is sure to help, at least with the “inspiration” part.

Truth be told, I suspect I’m the kind of science fiction fan that some “real” science fiction fans love to hate. I suck at memorizing complex theorems, I can’t participate in world-building discussions, and worse of all – I don’t really focus on the science. “What made an impression on you? Was it how well the author presented how the warp drive could work? Or the invention of a whole new theory to explain a fairly recent phenomenon in planetary movement?” My answer is “Er… I liked the character development of the guy piloting the ship?”

But I still like reading SF and I’ll still be inspired to write by SF, soft and hard, no matter the definition. I think that at some point I’ll put my story up – and maybe people will read it, maybe they won’t. But if I put it up and somebody who’s read it starts to ask something like “What if all the stars were suns?” I’d feel privileged. Better writers have inspired me to wonder about the stars, and about many other things… I’d just be passing the wonder on.

And if you’re being held back from writing by thinking that your SF will seem more like fantasy or realist fiction – don’t. Inevitably, there are readers who’ll think your story is “too science-y” or “not science-y enough” and not read it because it’s “not their thing.” Readers will classify your work, and so will publishers and bookshop owners. Nothing we can do about that.

Sometimes you’re a reader too – and if you want to pigeonhole other people’s work, the authors you read can’t do anything about you. Most of all, of course, you reserve the right to classify your own work. It may not be the recommended practice for most speculative fiction writers, but if it helps or amuses you, go right ahead.

Recently, I shared with a few friends my list of 10 things to keep in mind as a writer. This was my number 9:

Scrap what the pros are saying. Write what you DON’T know. Don’t sacrifice productivity because you think you’re writing what you shouldn’t be writing about – there is no such thing as “something you shouldn’t be writing about.”

Just because you’re not a scientist, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to write science fiction. Just because you’ve never had sex, doesn’t mean you should avoid writing erotica. The key is to do your research. Respect your material and your subject matter enough to research extensively, and to patch up holes where necessary.

But don’t not write just because you are held back by rules – rules like nice girls shouldn’t write kinky sex, straight writers shouldn’t attempt gay fiction, Iraqis shouldn’t write about American politics, social realist writers shouldn’t wander into the realms of faerie, etc. There are so many interesting stories that haven’t been told yet. Some are real, some are imagined, but they all have value.

Say what you feel, not what you ought to say.