June 18th, 2009
Above and beyond the basic skills these areas require, some of which like writing and editing are in common, there is a key creative difference.
When you’re learning to be a scientist, you get trained to say “no” to ideas.
Most ideas are probably not original and wrong, and even the popular ideas are usually not right in their details and need revision. Teaching students how to be critical and not accept every ideal as likely is central to science. All ideas are not equal. Again, most are wrong.
When you’re learning to write science fiction, you need to say “yes” to ideas.
Most ideas are not original, or necessarily interesting, but there is usually a way to make them so with some creative effort. If you apply the science thinking to the process, you kill off your best ideas, when almost any idea can be made into something glorious and wonderful. If you figure out the angle that makes it so. There’s usually one, if you keep looking.
Sometimes it’s hard to go back and forth between the two, but it’s good for scientists to keep in a little “yes” to make insights, and science fiction writers to keep in a little “no” to dig out more interesting ideas.
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Was it difficult for you to separate the science half of you with the science fiction part considering that Spider Star is a hard science fiction novel?
When I first started writing, I shied away from hard science fiction. I shot down a lot of ideas and had a hard time with it, frankly. It took some effort to get over it, but everyone should try to play to their strengths.
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Travis, I eventually learned how to turn off the science critic when developing science fiction ideas. It kept me from writing space-based hard sf for years, however.
The initial trick was to write about something astronomical I didn’t know much about, developing and idea first and then getting the research in to make it work. At that point I knew how to look for ways to make the idea work rather than prevent the idea from developing.
It seems now that with scientists increasingly constrained within their narrow fields, it’s up us science fiction writers to do the blue-sky thinking. But putting across some fantastic idea, something original, is not likely to be taken seriously by the science community who demand the following criteria: the science background of the writer, and: how the idea relates to known facts or theories.
But as you say, applying the science thinking to a creative idea can kill it off. Though of course, when dealing with the future, today’s knowledge would be a limiting factor.