Why do we make our own lives more difficult? I'd always dreamed of being a writer and one of the first bits of sage advice which was dispensed in my general direction was "write what you know". That's all well and good, but I love science fiction so that's what I write, even though I've never been into space. The problem is, I have ZERO background in science, yet I insist in not just keeping my science current, but even trying to get ahead of the curve.
Back when Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and the other founders of what is now called Speculative Fiction started writing, space travel was only a dream and computers weren't much more sophisticated than an abacus. To give you my favourite statistic, "the average wrist watch now has more computing power than existed on the entire planet in 1960 (the year I was born!)." (Source Unknown). Amazing. Even more amazing is the fact that the statistic is from 1995. In the thirteen years since I read this 'fact', computers have become so much more sophisticated and miniaturized than we expected in '95. I expect we're now at the point that a wrist watch is available which has more computing power than existed on the entire planet in 1970 (the year after man recahed the moon).
My point is (and I do have one), scientific developments from computing power to cloning to nanotech are happening so fast that if I started writing a sci-fi novel today using the best commercially avilable technology of the day and I finished the first draft exactly one year later, I would have to update the science in the second draft or the story would look horribly outdated. Now imagine trying to keep up with scientific advancements and then predict where they will be in five, ten or a hundred years time.
What this means is that I've been researching everything from nanotech to the two hundred extra-solar planets to molecular manufacturing to quantum mechanics to military ordinance development for the last year in an attempt to make my story believable. Is it frustrating? You betcha. Is it fun? I wouldn't have it any other way!
Of course human relationships aren't evolving at nearly the same rate (some say not at all) and that's where the real fun comes in --- dovetailing glacial-slow human developments with the near-lightspeed of scientific developments. Maybe that's why some writers create worlds populated by robots and aliens --- they want there to be hope for improvement.
Cheers,
Tim.
Author of Stand Up & Succeed
www.StandUpAndSucceed.com
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