Why Read Sci-Fi

Why Read Sci-Fi? 

Why would a fan of romance and mystery genres ever read sci-fi? What can we learn from sci-fi authors? After all, their stories are mainly set in the future. They're totally imaginary, made-up, pulled out of the air--a literary conjuring trick. Or are they?


As an editor, I have had to think again. The science fiction authors whose books appear on the Muse It Up Publishing list have totally impressed me through attention to detail in writing and plotting, the accuracy of their knowledge and their determination to be ahead of the game by predicting the lifestyle in their future worlds.


The characters know all about the latest research trends this century. Their authors incorporate a hearty helping of scientific fact into their fictional plots.

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 World View


When sci-fi authors write that the distance from the earth to the moon is 384000 kilometers or that a new moon dweller is acclimatising to gravity at 1/2 g, they know where to go to have the figures corroborated. Terri Main, author of Dark Side of the Moon, a book that combines sci-fi with the all-time  favourite cozy mystery genre, had me looking up and learning about g-forces on the NASA website.


A book like Dark Side of the Moon appeals to any reader who enjoys painless learning through reading fiction. Its world is a totally credible extension of the world as we know it today. The science is accurate and the mystery as intriguing as an Agatha Christie best seller.


Yes, readers are suspending disbelief to "live" in this imaginary world but it is a world view they cannot fault.


Lessons from sci-fi writers


Lesson One:
All too often, a factual error or an improbable location can stop readers enjoying a story. No use having a big game hunter hero killing elephants in London to save the heroine if the writer hasn’t given a credible basis for the animals’ appearance and stampede through town.


Knowing the size of the beasts in comparison to the Houses of Parliament could add to the realism of the reader experience. I’m not advocating bogging your story down with boring detail. But an odd and unusual fact can work wonders to improve the credibility of your fictional world.


Lesson Two:
Know your readers.


Let’s face it—it is probably not a good idea to have a hero who kills wild animals at all unless he repents and founds a sanctuary for endangered species as a result of the heroine’s persuasive skills.Today’s romance readers are more likely to support conservation causes.


Sci-fi authors have a committed following. They know exactly what their readers like and don’t like to read. They don’t follow convention slavishly but they do keep ahead of the game in their own reading and research to avoid being caught out in inaccuracies.


Keep up-to-date with your reading and make sure to keep your characters in tune with their world.


 Lesson Three:
Be adventurous when it comes to developing your genre. Anyone can be a sleuth in your cozy mystery—even a werewolf. Your heroine can be any age, any shape, any nationality. Your hero can have flaws—please add a little reality to the fiction LOL


Sci-fi authors like Krista D. Ball delight in standing stereotypes on their heads. It’s great fun and worth trying especially when you come to one of those dreaded sticky patches mid-novel.

Haibun anybody?

Looking for something new to kick off your creativity? As a cure for procrastination or writer’s block try Haibun. Haibun  is the mixture of prose and haiku first featured in Japan through the travel writing and meditations of a 17^th century monk.

Since then, writers have found the haibun ideal for sharing thoughts and meditation, and for travel writing, autobiography and biography, descriptive and historical narrative.

Haiku is the Japanese poetry form now familiar to most poets and school children. It consists of three lines: one of five syllables, the second of seven syllables, and the third and last of five syllables. It is popular because it is fun to write in such well-defined disciplined way.

Haiku can start, end or indeed appear anywhere in the midst of a prose passage to intensify or give added depth to its meaning.

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Winter's Soul 
      

Patricia Harrington, an award-winning mystery writer, has taken the haibun one step further in her Gothic romance/suspense novella Winter’s Soul. Each section is prefaced by a haiku to entice the reader deeper into the story—a simple but most effective stylistic pattern.

Winter’s Soul is the  tale of an unusual ménage à trios, set in 1930s England. A mood piece, it proves the haibun ideal for building suspense and dramatic tension.

Haibun explained

In a hurry to find out more about the haibun and glean ideas before the book , published by Muse It Up Publishing, comes out later this year? Try the useful links provided by Ray  Rasmussen, the poet who has both led and followed the evolution of the form in contemporary English writing.


Using the haibun


I like the idea of using it for journaling or in my Morning Pages which I write at any time during the day to clear my head and to start covering the blank whiteness of that terrifyingly empty page.

Internet Time Check

Lost my internet connection this morning—the worst thing that could have happened.

One of my authors is missing. At the point of returning edits, waiting for other deadline edits to arrive for checking and expecting a vital email from the publisher, I am cut off from the outside world.

Ahead of me--a blank screen and aeons of time, time to add up the number of hours I spend on line using the grand old excuse of “working.” It beats counting sheep. The number of times I have woken up with my head banging on the keyboard proves that.

Emails and social networking are part of the job. But perhaps two hours a day is excessive.

 I’ve just spent five minutes oohing and aahing over a powerpoint on old age sent by a friend with a never-ending library of brilliantly photographed, philosophical presentations. And then, of course, I had to visit paramotor pilot and photographer George Steinmetz in Arabia's Empty Quarter and muse over the photographs there – all work, all inspiration, all going to the well to recharge energy. So let’s say another hour a day “researching.”

Back to the editing—but I look up every reference, check every grammar point, study all the ins and outs of copyright and trademarks on the Internet. Another four-hour Internet stretch at least. No, I’m not finished. Another two hours late into the night when the family have gone to bed—has anyone written to me? Are there any group messages? Which of the 500 unread emails should I catch up with?

Lost my internet connection this morning—and it’s still lost, thank goodness. I shall finish my edits on time, may even manage week three (correction--month three) of edits on my own poor little WIP.

Green trees frame patches of brilliant blue sky, birds are singing, the swallow babies' flying practice is going well. What am I doing inside, fretting over a lost virtual world when my own world awaits?

No Internet has proved a blessing in disguise to reconnect me to today's reality , real needs--is that really the state of the kitchen floor?

It has also made me realize yet again how lucky I am with this lovely editing job with MuseItUp Publishing where I work with a far-seeing publisher and multiple realities created by so many gifted minds.