Another writer I respect made the comment, “In Science Fiction, the biggest space ship wins,” and hence my three books covers (only one is published) each has a space ship.
He is a much better writer than me and worth listening to.
He also said there is an immense amount of competition for readers with so many authors (presumably with big space ships) and after reading my novel The Camper, thought it was ‘blah’. He didn’t say that, but I could see it in his eyes.
So, size matters in science fiction? And space ships.
Let’s Have a Huge Climax
These are always good. They happen in a book with the classic ‘curve of the story line’ as the reader is drawn forward to the really exciting piece near the end where it is all exposed, explained and resolved etc.
I think he was looking for some huge climax in The Camper, some mega cataclysmic show down between the forces of good and evil, where the baddies get trashed and the goodies smooch and lay on a beach somewhere getting sand in awkward places.
He was too polite to say it was missing a space ship, no guns, no super weapons, no space battles, no bug eyes aliens, no nudity or nookie in the space station janitors closet. None of those things.
I think he was conditioned to look for those things and hence he was bored.
Clearly he wanted those things and maybe the readers of today want them also, but I’m not particularly interested.
Quite frankly, and I was too polite to say it, there is an awful lot of that kind of material on Amazon!
He gave me an example novel by a respected author but I couldn’t finish it. It was interesting in its own way but was like a cookie-cutter novel of space ships, battles, throw in some romance and of course the insurmountable obstacles (that get surmounted) and I gave up. It was formulaic – following a script that didn’t take a huge amount of nous to work out what was coming next.
Just so we are sure about this : the criticism remiains; my novel may be boring and lack a huge climax and be the poorer for not having whopper space ships, guns, sex and violence. However I am happy with it. It is a nice novel, gentle, happy, should leave you happy (not that I’m biased of course!!!!).
So What Is My ‘Style’?
Read The Camper and you’ll find out. Sorry. Couldn’t resist that!
Ok, I’m heavy on exposition and probably a bit light on action. I have a few protagonists who are pretty much invincible and they can be nice, nasty, somewhat-violent when the mood calls but always with a goal. There is no gratuitous violence or sex. Seriously, SciFi For Dreamers is not the place for that.
Oh. Now that phrase, ‘SciFi For Dreamers‘ just fell out of my fingers. Maybe it’s worth writing down on some paper on my desk.
Maybe that is my style. I think about the universe to come, the way planet earth will evolve over time and the changes to the human race then add a few buckets-of-fiction and make a story about it. Maybe I think about what we need to survive. That is probably my style.
What annoys me about some fiction is that a space ship using a reaction drive shoots across the solar system in a few hours. Seriously? Nope, it can’t. At the speed of light, from here to the sun is 8 minutes alone and to Jupiter about 45 minutes. Doing that in a space ship with a reaction drive (ie a rocket) would take months and or years. The “Martian” movie took months to get to Mars from Earth and that’s close. They used a low acceleration Ion drive and was pretty realistic.
I chose differently, a gravity based drive that would kick a space ship to 1G acceleration making Jupiter a voyage of about 6 days. That’s FAST. How the gravity drive works is a bit of a problem though, just add a few ‘quantums’, that always works.
So, Is This Niche SciFi Then?
I have to smile at that. It is low key and different. It will leave the reader wondering what the point is some times as there is no super huge climax and there is always more to come.
But that is the whole point of it. The Stellar Universe works toward a new human race, a new way of living and surviving into the future against the odds. You won’t get that in a single novel.
Maybe it is close to real life? We live each day and have the future spread out in front of us and hopefully it is good. We can’t always have that huge climax, that special time and expect it every day. Rather we live and move forward.
So, if you read The Camper and miss the space ship and all the other ‘exciting’ things then – sorry – mine is a story a little more close to real life. That’s my story anyway.
The Photo I Used
I chose this one as it typified what I don’t write about.
Why would any space ship designer make a ship like the one in the foreground? It would have to have something truly awful in the central ‘dome’ to keep it separate like that. Then the break in the ring around the ship. Why? It makes me think of a horse shoe magnet with its North and South poles. Then that made me think it was a weapon. But closer inspection makes me think ‘not.’
The other circular “UFO type” space ship over the building looks more sensible. More practical.
I liked the effect of the pollution (I presume it is pollution) and the person looking through the arch way, probably wondering how the planet came to be as polluted.
So, what would a space ship in the distant future look like then? My suggestion is ‘practical’ and that summs it up.