Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  For those writers who are searching for the more intense experience of a residential workshop, the time and expense of the workshop must be taken into account, as well as cost of travel to the workshop’s location, and of course the roster of instructors for that year’s session. (Over the long haul, a writer’s fellow-workshoppers will probably be more important and more memorable for him or her than any of the instructors—but in the absence of a functioning time machine, there’s no way to evaluate one’s classmates before sending in the application.) No single workshop is perfect for all students; each of the currently running major workshops has different strengths and very different learning atmospheres. It’s a good idea to talk to a couple of former students before enrolling in a workshop. (For instance, the Viable Paradise mottoes are “We don’t do ‘workshopping for blood’” and “It is not the goal of this workshop to make you cry. The writing life will do that to you all on its own.”)

  Residential Workshops

  Milford UK: http://www.milfordsf.co.uk/

  Clarion: http://clarion.ucsd.edu/

  Clarion West: http://www.clarionwest.org/

  Clarion South: http://www.clarionsouth.org/

  Odyssey: http://www.sff.net/odyssey/

  Viable Paradise: http://www.viableparadise.com/

  Online Workshops

  Critters: http://www.critters.org/

  Science Fiction Online Writing Workshop: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/

  * * * *

  Debra Doyle is author or co-author of more than thirty books, and an instructor at Viable Paradise. She has a doctorate in English specializing in Anglo-Saxon literature from the University of Pennsylvania.

  INVENTING THE FUTURE, by Mike Brotherton

  “We are living in interesting times; in fact, they’re so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF.”

  —Charles Stross

  Stross is a wickedly smart science fiction author with his finger on the pulse of changing technology who is also well aware of the lag time between writing a story and seeing it in print. Science fiction set in the very near future can become effectively obsolete before it is even published.

  This is not just true about science fiction, or just true about the situation now, but it is perhaps more true about the genre and this epoch than in general. Still, stories written in the late 1980s that talked about the Soviet Union were destined to appear dated and strange rather quickly as that country rapidly disintegrated into its original parts. Today, the rush of revolution in the Middle East may similarly date stories set there, as uncertainty hovers concerning what that part of the world will be like in coming years.

  While history isn’t static, and science and technology in particular move quickly, there are a number of things every serious science fiction writer must consider when building the world their story takes place within.

  As suggested by Stross, technology is a primary issue that can date a story rapidly and cause future readers to lose their suspension of disbelief. Robert Heinlein’s spacefarers of the far future often did calculations using slide rules, jarring modern readers who pick up some of his classics. Some of the effects can be subtle, as ubiquitous cell phone use ruins many old plotlines, and as the consequences of ubiquitous technology of other sorts can make it too easy for characters to solve their problems. For very near-future science fiction, the technology is already on the drawing board and foreseeable, but when it hits, and how hard it hits, is next to impossible to foresee. Writers must be diligent and self-consistent with how they handle the technology. While blue jeans aren’t going to vanish in the next decade, the laptop or ebook reader might lose out to computer tablets—or not.

  The science fiction writer has to consider economics, too, unfortunately. Computing power has continued to get cheaper and more common, but perhaps physical limits will ameliorate such trends. Or perhaps they will accelerate, and every child will have access to laptops and the internet, unless blocked by censoring governments. In the future, more and more people will carry gadgets with more and more capabilities. Looking beyond that horizon, one long-honored tradition is that machines will replace the labor force, leading to universal wealth and leisure time. That’s probably unrealistically utopian, but cheap robots and computing will replace some classes of jobs in the future, as they have already done so.

  And what of the technology that applies to medicine? Do we manage to lick colds and the flu, or is it a never-ending battle? Cancer? AIDS? The possible advent of nanotechnology or other breakthroughs could result in greatly extended lifespan, which will forever alter human demographics and society.

  Another key area that the futurist must invent for their story is how the environment has developed. Has global warming continued, and required Americans to sleep under mosquito netting or chance malaria? Or have we switched from fossil fuels to renewable energy, or even engaged in risky geoengineering? How about issues of biodiversity and mass extinctions? These are things that can continue to deteriorate, or be beaten either through regulation or the development of new technologies. One possible future can have fewer animal species, while another, perhaps equally plausible, has more as genetic engineering may allow the creation of new animals or the resurrection of those gone extinct. Mammoths grazing in pastures along the roadside would probably not be a detail about the world to skip in recounting a roadtrip of the future.

  If a writer goes beyond the next few decades where these issues are paramount, science fiction has recognized a looming possibility that can totally rewrite the future. Science fiction author and computer scientist Vernor Vinge, along with inventor Ray Kurzweil, have postulated that the future may become intrinsically unpredictable due to the development of superhuman artificial intelligences. This horizon of our predictive power is called the Singularity. It has also been called the rapture of the nerds, a time when technology makes all things possible. Or not. Predictability is out the window when considering intelligences fundamentally smarter than human geniuses. Whether or not this event seems plausible, the science fiction writer must consider how smart computers can get and how fast, and how that affects the stories they create. Battlestar Galactica and Terminator are stories of disaster brought on by smart computers, for instance. Such creations need not lead to disaster, but their existence will cause profound changes.

  As longer timescales are considered, humanity will stumble in some way, or move into space for the duration (the Earth and sun will not last forever). The space environment poses certain logistical issues as does the Singularity and the advance of biotechnology. Humans can colonize space and other worlds as variations of our current form, or as totally different biologically engineered creations, or even as human-machine hybrids. Writers must have a sense of this within the future they create and what makes sense, and be able to justify the logic. This is the invention of not just the future, but of an exodus into the universe.

  The technologies of space travel must be considered. It is a common conceit of science fiction that faster-than-light (FTL) travel is possible, and that it makes colonizing the galaxy similar to the colonization of other continents across Earth’s oceans. Einstein’s relativity suggests that FTL is impossible, although some cheats like wormholes or local warping of spacetime might still be possible. It is important, but often neglected, to realize that FTL implies time travel and the violation of causality unless free will is an illusion. FTL is so commonly done that most writers and consumers ignore the philosophical implications. Still, they’re real.

  As stories enter the far future, there is still another important issue: are we alone? Recent advances in astronomy indicate that planets are common, and Earthlike planets are not excessively rare. Every writer dealing with far-future humans exploring the galaxy must evaluate whether or not the Milky Way is a place teeming with life, perhaps developed civilizations (and why contact took so long), or if humans are unique.

  Finally, in the case of the far-far future, is the
sky the limit? Or is it beyond the sky? Will humans continue in one form or another, or will they go extinct with their sun, or something more inevitable like the heat death of the universe?

  There are a lot of questions to consider, from what technology electronic books will be read on in the next few years, to whether or not the human species will persist in some form or other into a changing universe. There are many plausible but contradictory futures to sort from, and the choices will be informed both by research and the perspective of the writer, whether optimist or pessimist about how our civilization adjusts to the risks and rewards of our increasing technological capabilities. This is the challenge of the science fiction writer in addition to finding a story to tell that illuminates the human condition.

  Perhaps it is impossible to do, to invent the future, but that is the challenge awaiting the science fiction writers when they sit down to the keyboard. It isn’t easy. It isn’t even possible to get it right, probably, as Charles Stross tells us, but it must be attempted. To tell even the simplest story set in the future, it is necessary to invent that future.

  * * * *

  Mike Brotherton is the author of the science fiction novels Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008), both from Tor Books. He’s also a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming and conducts research of active galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope and nearly every observatory that will give him time on their facilities. He is the founder of the NASA and National Science Foundation funded Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, which brings a dozen award-winning professional writers to Wyoming every summer. He blogs about science and science fiction at http://www.mikebrotherton.com.

  SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT, by Leigh Grossman

  There’s a lot of confusion among new SF writers about the basics of how to submit a manuscript to a publisher. So this is a fairly general nuts-and-bolts kind of introduction. The more detailed nuances of book proposal writing, finding market reports, and such you will have to find elsewhere (and be sure to read the essay on avoiding publishing scams before you start looking). Most of what I talk about here is true for submitting both books to publishers and stories to magazines, and it’s similar to what you’ll be submitting to a prospective literary agent.

  What You’re Submitting

  For books, you’re generally submitting some combination of a cover letter, a proposal, an outline or plot summary, and several sample chapters. For a short story, you’re generally submitting a cover letter and the complete story. In either case, your submission should be in proper manuscript format (this may seem trivial, but it’s very important) and in accordance with that particular publisher’s or magazine’s guidelines.

  If you don’t follow the publisher’s guidelines and submit the material in proper manuscript format, your work is likely to be rejected out of hand. At best, the editor will be annoyed and predisposed not to like it, since you’re making extra work for the editor. You’re asking someone to publish your book: Don’t expect them to change the way they do business specifically to accomodate you, unless you’re already a giant best-seller. (And if you’re going to go the prima donna route, you’re likely to get dropped by the publisher as soon as your sales drop a little bit, where they might stick with a low-maintenance writer.) The initial submission is the first hint the editor gets at how well you take direction and editing; if you don’t follow directions before you have a contract, what are the chances you’re going to afterward?

  I’m not trying to sound intimidating here. Proper manuscript format is actually really easy to follow, as are most publisher’s guidelines.

  Proper Manuscript Format

  Manuscript format is designed to be as easy as possible to read. The theory behind it is that as editors, we only have one pair of eyes, and they have to last for a long time. Anything that taxes them unnecessarily is bad.

  Do not try to impress the editor with brightly colored paper, confetti, glitter, or things that spring out of the box (or email attachment) when it’s opened. No script fonts, half-dead toner cartridges, or oddly colored ink. Your creativity should come through in your writing, not in your formatting.

  While different publishers want slight variations on this, the basics of proper manuscaript format are as follows:

  Text should be double-spaced, 12-point type in a text font (preferably Courier or Times New Roman, but Bookman, Palatino, or another easily readable font is fine, too).

  Use one side of the page only (no matter how long the book is). Use standard 8 1/2 by 11 paper if you’re in the U.S., or whatever the standard is where you’re writing.

  Margins should be set at one inch. Every page after the first should have a header on the upper right-hand corner containing: your name/book or story title/page number. (If you’re working in Word, you can do this by going to File/Page Setup, and checking “different first page” or “First page special.”)

  Use either italic or underlining for emphasis, but not both. (They mean the same thing typographically. Underlining was used for italics in the days when typewriters could only use one font, and the habit stuck. Lots of practices in publishing are done a particular way because that’s the way Gutenberg happened to do them, and the habit stuck.)

  Many publishers now ask for submissions by email, but others prefer traditional manuscripts. If it’s a story and it’s more than five pages long, send it flat in a large envelope. If it’s shorter you can fold it and send it in a normal envelope if you’d like.

  The first page should look something like this:

  Legal Name Approximate word count

  Address

  Phone

  E-mail address

  Title

  by Whatever Name You’re Writing Under

  Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

  Publisher’s Guidelines

  Most publishers and magazines post their guidelines more-or-less prominantly (depending on how swamped they’re feeling) on their websites. Magazine guidelines are also generally listed somewhere in the magazine. Guidelines tell you the specifics of what to put in the package you’re submitting. Sometimes they’ll give you information on what the publisher is currently looking for or overstocked with.

  Another important source of guidelines are several writers who put together market guides geared to working professional writers. Some of these are free and some are market based, and they can cover everything from genre fiction to airline magazines. They also tend to have guidelines for open anthologies, which otherwise you find out about mainly through industry rumor. Market guides also tend to have helpful articles, reviews, etc., but those are pretty much the equivalent of the proverbial articles in Playboy—not saying you won’t read them, but probably not the first time through, and it’s not why you bought the magazine.

  Sources geared mostly to new writers, like Writer’s Digest, are usually much less useful; they tend to be out of date, and less geared to working writers than to newbies.

  This may seem like obvious advice, but don’t submit to a magazine you’ve never read. You don’t have to subscribe, but at least leaf through a copy to get a sense of what they actually publish.

  Cover Letters

  Cover letters should be simple and short. Don’t go into every detail in the cover letter—that’s what the proposal and outline are for. The purpose of the cover letter is to make me want to read the proposal (the same way the proposal should make me want to read the book). It should be quick and interesting.


  Longtime editor John Ordover gives an example of the perfect cover letter:

  Dear [Editor’s Name]

  Enclosed please find my [x] thousand word [genre] short story which I feel may be right for [name of magazine]. I enclose an SASE in case I am mistaken.

  (If you have any credits, you go on to say)

  I have sold x stories to [magazine names]

  (and if you don’t have any you say)

  This would be my first professional sale.

  I look forward hearing from you.

  Sincerely,

  [your name]

  (SASE is short for self-addressed, stamped envelope, so the publisher can reply to you. If you want your story or book returned, you need to include an envelope and sufficient postage. If you don’t want it returned, you need to say “the manuscript is disposable” in your letter.)

  The format is similar for books and short stories. You want to be quick and to the point, but give the editor any specific information he or she needs to categorize your story.

  Be sure and include credits and any special expertise. Professional credits are best, but non-paid credits count, too. If you’ve written a long, well-received series on a popular blog, say so. Ditto for a weekly column at a local newspaper, or an academic article on the same subject as the book. If it’s a thriller about neurosurgery and you’re a neurosurgeon, say so. While it’s important not to oversell yourself, it’s just as important not to undersell yourself.