Today I’m very pleased to have author Tiana Warner guest posting about the possibilities writing sci-fi opens up. Tiana is the author of The Infinite Knowledge of J.T. Badgley.
What if our planet’s gravitational pull began to diminish? What if the sun started to burn out? What if we found the God particle?
One of the most alluring forces of the Sci-Fi genre is a writer’s opportunity to create an entirely new universe. The world you invent is completely your own, and you can do whatever you want inside of it. As a Sci-Fi author, it boils down to a simple question with limitless potential: “What If?” Apply the question to the laws of the universe, and you’ll unearth a whole novel’s worth of possibilities.
Take a “What If?” explored in many Sci-Fi stories: What if we lived on a planet orbiting a binary star system? In other words, what if a planet had two suns? To write the genre, we need more than one layer of imagination and science. The base layer—the pie crust, if you will—is scientific knowledge of the concept. This is critical to Sci-Fi, and any aspiring writer of the genre must be willing to do the research. In the case of a binary star system, some investigation into astrophysics helps here: What are the daily and yearly sun cycles like on a planet with two stars? How are the seasons affected? Does the planet’s temperature change drastically as the larger star becomes nearer or further? It’s this factual base layer of our metaphorical pie that enthralls the reader and leaves us thinking, “Wow . . . this could really happen!”
Then comes the delicious inner goo of the pie—the creativity layer. This is the part where you hold nothing back and let your brain run wild with ideas. What kinds of species would evolve to adapt to the extreme climate? What would a civilization’s calendar year look like? How would religions of sun-worshipers be different, given that the planet’s sun revolves as a pair rather than alone? It’s wonderful fun to smash these layers together and mix creativity with real science. From that simple “What If?”, an entire novel—a series, even—is born.
In The Infinite Knowledge of J. T. Badgley, I created a planet deliberately similar to our own, and and posing that “What If?” question allowed me to explore a few key differences. What if the planet’s core became strained and the gravitational pull compromised? What if we could treat electromagnetic waves as particles, and compress them into a powerful energy source? The answers to these questions form a complex blend of real science and fabricated science that is unique to the genre. It lets readers enter a world where this technology is possible, popular, and highly controversial. That Sci-Fi blend is why I actually had a couple of people ask me, after they read the book, how I learned about manipulating electromagnetic waves. And they were amused to find out that I’d made everything up! Though it’s fun inventing concepts when you write Sci-Fi, the story truly gains momentum when you can relate your made-up concepts to the real thing.
No matter what type of knowledge forges the base layer of your Sci-Fi story—astronomical, biological, chemical—all it takes is that one simple question, “What If?” to unleash an entire universe of possibilities. That careful fusion of the science and the fiction gives us a thought-provoking setting for a fantastic story. In the end, the only limit to creating an enthralling story out of real-life science becomes the author’s imagination.
Happy writing, and may your creativity run wild.
Tiana is a graduate from the University of British Columbia, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. She currently lives on a hobby farm in Abbotsford, BC, and enjoys riding her quarter horse, Bailey.