Posted: Jun 19, 2016 8:13 pm
Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.Evolving wrote:I could certainly explain the science: that's what I do in my physics posts here. It's the imagination that I'm less certain about: I don't think the ideas would flow as readily for hard sci-fi as they've been doing for, as you say, the human stories.
I sent Free Fall to the Writers' Workshop for their thoughts,some time ago; the chap they passed it on to for review, himself a sci-fi author, made a point about genre which I think was spot-on. In a nutshell, at its heart the story is a human drama which could equally well take place (with the appropriate amendments to the setting) on Earth: in an Arctic mining operation, say, or in a Chinese province under the influence of Falun Gong and with some international sporting event taking place there. I think that's right, and I'd say the only reason these stories are set in space at all is because I think I can do it, I feel comfortable with it, as a result of my studies of physics. This Solar System of the reasonably near future feels to me like a region that I know, like Hardy's Wessex; I could just as easily, in principle, write novels set in a country or a town where I have lived myself. So, if we're being exact, these novels are not really science fiction at all; they're character-driven dramas that unfold in a sci-fi-like setting.
Sci-fi is a broad church, and my preferences are pretty peculiar, and I certainly don't think mine should delimit the genre. This is something I discuss with colleagues of mine (computer scientists are perhaps disproportionately into sci-fi). My main colleague really only cares about space opera, Dune being his favourite book of all time. It's not my thing at all, and I think Herbert could have also told the story in a non sci-fi setting. But I wouldn't say it wasn't sci-fi because of that. Nor what I say yours aren't sci-fi. On the contrary, I'd say you are writing much harder sci-fi than Herbert.
My main attraction to science and mathematics are the really frigging weird results or observations or stories, and I like to see those explored in fiction. But that's pretty niche.