Complex Numbers

Parting Shot

Congratulations on making it to the last day of the competition! What was your favorite prompt from the last month? What was the most rewarding aspect of participating in the competition?

I liked several of them, but probably my favorite prompt was the one about increasing life spans.

As I noted in my response to that one, I'm a science fiction reader and, sometimes, writer, and this sort of thing falls neatly within the realm of science fiction.

This may not ring true to people who aren't as familiar with the genre. After all, isn't science fiction about zipping along at warp speed and blasting aliens out of existence?

Well, yeah, there's some of that, and it can be fun, too. But when science fiction is at its best, it's thoughtful. This has been true from the beginning, when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. She took what was speculative science at the time - the observation that electricity can cause muscle contractions in dead tissue, specifically - and asked the question: what if this means we can reanimate the dead through application of scientific principles; what could the implications of that be?

The fact that the science was a dead end (pun, as always, intended) is irrelevant; what matters is exploring the ramifications. And, from the perspective of literature, providing the right point of view to make it relatable to a reader. The same themes echoed throughout science fiction for the subsequent 200 years. Now, that's influence.

Periodically, we get treated to articles that ask some version of the question: which SF authors of the past got the modern era the most right? While these can be interesting - I think I might have linked to one of them here, a while back - it misses the real point, which is that SF isn't about correctly predicting the future; it's about the intersection of humanity and technology. Anyone can predict the future. Some of them will even get some things right, because probability works that way. A very few of them will get lots of things right. Mostly this is a result of pure chance, not some special insight.

This is why I get all pedantic whenever someone asserts that Star Wars is science fiction. It's not. It's fantasy with science fiction props. Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan - but it would be like calling Fight Club a romance.

Possibly all this is rattling around in my head because I had the privilege of judging April's site contest this month, and the required genre was science fiction. So that got me thinking about it, and about how people perceive it.

So, to get back to the question, I liked that particular prompt because it promoted thinking like a science fiction writer.

What was the most rewarding aspect of participation? Well, for me, as I suspect is the case for many writers, writing something forces me to get my thoughts in order. It reveals flaws in reasoning. It exercises the old neurons. I got some ideas for stories out of it, and reading others' takes on things helps me see what other perspectives might be - another important aspect of writing, else all your characters are just proxies for you. Some of these prompts had me examining things I hadn't given much thought to, which is always a good thing.

So, thanks for the activity, thanks to the organizers for putting it together, and most of all, thank you for reading.

I'll be back soon. This isn't over.