How to Write Science Fiction

Creating your Universe - Part 3 - Rules and Edges

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

The Edges of the Universe

We’ve discussed various ‘rules’ and ‘boundaries’ in more general terms up to now, but as we’re writing Science Fiction there are some things you really need to make sure you have clear in your own mind before you start throwing words at your idea. Things like Zombies, Space travel, Time travel, the End of the World, Cyberpunk, and other sub-genres / SciFi subjects all have rules or ‘edges’ that need to be established and stuck to in your story.

Even in the world of pure Fantasy or Sci-Fantasy crossover, there have to be rules or you can just have an all powerful Mage wave a hand and destroy all your spaceships and proclaim himself Emperor of all things for all time. That would make for a short story, but not a very good one.

In this piece, I’m going to focus on the idea of space travel and examine some common ways that Science Fiction deals with the extremely challenging matter of traveling across something as endless and empty as space. What follows is meant to illustrate how you can use actual science to help you with defining rules and edges in your writing. Embracing science in this way helps your story fit more cleanly into what people already know and accept of the world, as well as into the rules of other Science Fiction. However, if you feel like throwing science to the breeze, and having your characters travel around by magical, interstellar railroads, you are entirely welcome to come up with anything you like.

Do I really Need all These Rules?

Yes. And No. It depends whether you want your readers on board with you, or just wandering along behind saying “uh, yeah, but I don’t quite get why…”. As with all the history of the world you’ve created and the character back stories, you don’t need to have all this information in the story itself. However, if you as the writer know how things work, then so will your reader. All you need to do is drop in the occasional hint like “the ship’s computer dropped them out of hyperspace far enough away from the system that the gravitational pull of the planets…” or “dimensional gates always gave him a headache” or similar.

But it’s not just space travel that has rules. Each of the subgenres of Science Fiction has different edges / boundaries that you need to be aware of, even if you decide to break some of them. We’ll discuss the various subgenres of SciFi a little later on, as first we need to make sure you have your History, your language and your scenery set up, but we’ll do that once you’ve had a coffee.

Getting from Alpha Centuri to Betelgeuse

If the characters in your story are going to be traveling between the stars, you need to ask yourself how your colonists are going to get from A to B, or from Sol to Betelgeuse? Whatever you do, I’d recommend not using Warp Drive. Yes, we know it worked for Star Trek, but it really isn’t a great example to use when you have wonderful things like bussard ramjets, generation ships, suspended animation, and hyperspace / space folding to explore.

Each of these has its own limitations, often established by current scientific thought / theory. This doesn’t mean you can’t invent your own methods of transport, but it does mean that you will need to set up believable rules and limitations for whatever you come up with.

Pushing the big green button with “GO” on it isn’t quite enough in Science Fiction, unless of course you’re writing comedy. Even if you are writing comedy, most writers take a great deal of time to highlight the wonderful ludicrousness of their travel method. For example, the late, great, Douglas Adams’ ‘infinite improbability drive,’ which, despite being comedy gold and utterly unworkable (maybe), still gets explained in glorious comedic detail. Adams also establishes rules for its use, including detailed descriptions of the side effects of its use, which occasionally involved whales, bowls of petunias and a million gallon vat of custard. So, before you take a trip across the star studded skies, think about whether you’ve packed your flask of coffee and whether it’s going to be cold by the time you get there.