My novel and possible novel series....

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Thank you.

If you want to write, practice is the biggest help I can think of. Research is also very important.

I intend on researching. I chose 75 years as a reasonable time for cybernetics, AI, and androids to be of sufficient popularity and commoness. Just like the TV and the movie today, these things rarely make you bat an eyelid.

One thing I will have to do is rustle up some future pop-culture. That's the thing I've really neglected so far. While I have various slang terms already, I actually need to put some thought into what TV programs, movies, video games (an MMORPG along the lines of World of Warcraft and The World from Dot Hack will be the focus of book three), books, and magazines would be read. While I intend to reference culture from much of human history, I need to create some others.

I'm still trying to find the right time to set my story, since I don't know much about robotics and progress in that field of research. AI is moving at a very slow pace, which makes me think that a self-aware robot could possibly be probable in the 75 year figure you have for your story.

Hard to tell, but 75 years sounds reasonable.

Oh, as far as the tiem you're setting it in, can I just suggest that you pick a time, not a year? Write the book not as being in the year 2083, but as being '75 years from now.' That way it retains a timeless quality and won't be out of date if it's still in print by 2083.

People still read Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or watch the movie. Not to mention A Clockwork Orange, which seems to be set in the mid 1990's. And, of course, George Orwell's 1984. Setting it is 2083 is a safe bet for allowing the technology to happen.

I was just thinking how perhaps writing fiction has become more and more difficult because things are changing faster and faster and there are more and more THINGS making up average lives on day to day basis.
Anything imagined nowadays, unless is simplest of "in the now" stories , has to take into account thousands more objects, verbal expressions, and history etc, than books in previous times, which could concentrate on the people without losing credibility if had only slight background.

Now people want to see/read densely filled in detail about the imagined lives, which might explain why more and more books deal with relatively short moments in relatively cut off situations in life. Or the minutely imagined entirely fantasy worlds of A, B, C .... etc, in which because is fantasy there are none of the constraints which you mention, of realistic timeline developments etc

I think Philip K Dicks short stories are wonderful ( never managed to get into the novels) and i think one reason his stuff works so powerfully is that he keeps this tightly focussed perspective ( from which don't have to see/describe too much) . Don't see outside of it. It's often almost the most powerful thing about the stories is this tiny view , like a worms eye view. Funny that his strategy for dealing with a difficulty made a strength, like Van Goghs painting.

Anyway, GOOD LUCK, and stamina. Best wishes.
Dick said he wrote best at night when everybody else was asleep, because that was the only time he felt really alone. What about you?

Last edited by ouinon on 24 Dec 2007, 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah i'm paranoid about stealing ideas too. I'll buy anything you write Quater.

Good luck with that. I will buy when you get published.

Good luck with that. I will buy when you get published.

I tend to work best between 7-10pm.

I have solved part of the pop-culture problem. Made up a new TV series/novels for it that sort of plays into the misconceptions inherent in the plot of the novel.



Thanks. I'm glad to see also that I am not alone in terms of plagiarism paranoia.



Only if you'll like it. I only buy books that I think I will like. I'm not sure that you will like it, but considering you enjoy Half-Life and Stargate, you may do so. But it does not deal with aliens at all. None of the planned plot does, although at one point, a character will use a date (that I mentioned earlier in this thread) to state why humanity may not be open to alien forms of life. I'm trying to keep it at a closer level of reality. Things won't always work. I'm not taking the level of 'things malfunctioning' to the dark and grungy levels of Blade Runner, but rather keeping it somewhere between the humourous levels of Futurama and the moderate stuff of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series.

Some more background info on the future I am writing:

*Well-established colonies on the Moon and Mars. By the time this is set, it has been about 50 years since the first Mars landing.

*Cybernetics and neural interfaces are fairly common.

*Law enforcement is itself done by the police, but many investigative and forensics are done by private investigation firms.

*Global warming has been mitigated (not completely halted), but pollution and ozone depletion are still a problem. This isn't, again, dark and grungy, or utopian, more like middle-of-the-road.

*Androids and gynoids are common enough, and their AI is on average enough to fool the average listener.

*Terrorism and organised crime are more of the larger problems, along with biotech and cybertech problems.

Just some wrods of advice frrom anotehr aspiring sci fi writer:

The subgenre of "cyberpunk" is already passe in its original incarnation. Be sure that your are genuiely bringing something fresh and innovative to the table if you're going to label your work with that.

Dick's an insanely fabulous writer, and my personal sci fi hero. However, everyone and their dog has written a "Blade Runner inspired" novel (myself included). Be very careful about that (especially if you haven't actually read Dick's oringal short story and are aware of the stylistic differences between that and the highly influential film).

A lots of areas of reseach and thecnological development that your ideda seems to touch upon are all rapidly evolving fields. AI, cybernetics, robotics, research in lunar and martian landings/colonizing, law enforcement tech, global warming research/theory along with many other fields are hot, hot, hot right now. New things are developing monthly. You have to keep abreast of these things, not just for good ideas you might mine from them, but also to not make your fictional future universe so out of touch with the present real universe that your manuscript will never get past the slush pile. I personally read 3 different science mags for "lay people" (Astronomy, Scientific American, and Discover), plus the science sections in the NY Times and USA Today. Plus I comb the internet in regular intervals and watch science news of TV. I dont' aim to be an expert in these thins, but just to have a journalist level awareness of what's going on. It's only if something in particualr inspires me when I'll research more inedpthly.

That may seem like a lot of work, but realize while sci fi on TV and in film is often fairly "lowbrow", the world of sci fi literature is dominated by writers who are actually scientists and researchers, often times holding a Ph.D. or two. These are people who know what the near future most likely will look like, and creatively are pushing past that. It's pretty impressive what some of these writers are doing - real, serious visionary stuff, scientific yet also highly imaginative and creative. That's not to say you can't get published without a PH.D. in some science field, but the bar is definitely higher for novels and short stories than one might gather from sci fi films and TV.

The main reason why these Ph.D's can write great sci fi is because they know what's relevant - that's the first key. You may not be able to be an expert as they are in a certain field, but you can be knowledgable enough to be relevant. You can invent a universe that technically could never be real, yet it still needs to be tethered to reality in some way - a preferrably science- or technological-related way as this is sci fi - to make it relevant.

The second key is being innovative and really creating an unique, interesting and intriguing fictional universe. That comes from really pushing yourself, challenging your own ideas, and owning up when your ideas are hackneyed and need to be replaced by something fresher. If you find yoruself really in love with an idea, take a closer look - it may not be all you hoped. Getting your writing read by someone who can give you constructive feedback would also help.

Last bit of advice which I sincerely hope you'll take to heart: aim above writing fanfic. Seriously. I swear, fanfic is The Enemy if you want to write something original, relevant and wrothy of getting published. Granted there's a lot of hack jobs and fanfic getting published, but if you're going to put this much effort into an original idea you want to avoid that realm altogether. If you read fanfic presently, stop. Fanfic is 90% half-assery and hackneyed conventions, and its raison d'etre is rooted in stealing/borrowing/beating into the gound other people's ideas.

Sure you can learn some things from fanfic, but truth is, you will learn a lot more bad habits that you may not even be aware you've picked up. The lines between "canon" level writing and fanfic level writing is becoming very blurred, so you need to be aware and make consious choices about the quality of your writing. Otherwise you may find yourself following some trend that won't get you to the level you had first envisioned for your story.

I will take your advice to heart. And don't worry, I will not write this as fanfiction. This will be nothing's canon but my own. I am writing for original characters from my own motivations, and in fact the overall villain of the series is based on my own fears, as well as my darker side. Whenever I 'write' fanfiction, I just do so mentally. I don't commit them to paper, as it would be a mockery.

You also got to realise that I already have a Bachelor's in Health Science, and am working on a Master's, not to mention that I have read scientific books since the age of 6. My scientific background is sound enough, it is more of my writing technique and style that will need work.

I am continually reappraising many aspects of my work, rewriting bits here and there in order to spice them up. It's actually an interesting fact that I will not actually commit stuff to paper until I have a fairly good plot. Instead, I sort of read through extracts and set-pieces of the plot and sort of tinker with them mentally. Unlike Stephen King with the Dark Tower series, I know how the series, more or less, will end. I know the major events of the series and how they will affect the conclusion.

This is the first time that I have been able to sustain a plot once I get it down on paper. And while this is not the first permutation of the plot (there are at least 4 different versions I had run through mentally, all with a similar structure but with changes in genre setting and characters), this is the first that I have actually committed (and stayed committed) to writing.

There is also an added complication. I had been working on a video game script that had similar themes to parts of Future Tense. However, instead of scrapping one in favour of the other, I hope to actually have the video game become a trilogy that helps flesh out backstory of some characters from the novel, as well as some cultural background. The second game I had in mind takes place more or less concurrently to one of the books. The third adds a new and final conclusion to the books, but at the moment, I'm playing it by ear.

Good advice for me as well, AspieMartian. I'm dealing with similiar scientific criteria, and continued research is, of course, a prerequisite. I find it all rather daunting, so I might need to find a research-enthusiastic person more knowledgable than myself.

One of the main things in sci-fi that gets misrepresented is nanotechnology. You see all these novels and shows where the effect of the nanomachines is in seconds. Realistically, I think the fastest time a nanomachine colony can take effect is in the range of hours. So that is what it is like int he novels I will write. Nanomachine treatment of cancers would take a couple of days, and even then, they're not always accurate. Treatment of conditions such as motor neurone disease may take weeks, if not months (heat dissipation would be the major problem). Not only that, but nanotechology (NT) is very highly regulated due to the 'grey goo' fears. They have to be strictly programmed and shielded.

INSPIRATION!! !!

I was puzzling, if androids and gynoids were common in the future, not to mention fairly advanced AI, how would normal people be able to tell? Solution: add insignia to their clothing, along with an ID chip. And this also adds fresh inspiration for cultural background and extra storyline. Because that is not dissimilar to how the Nazis marked the Jewish people during their reign, and I think the practice goes back to medievil times. So this is virtually a continuation of a very dangerous practice.

Excellent precedent for this:
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, published 1850
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg143.htm

And also:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badge_of_shame