Why writing fantasy is better than writing science fiction « Joseph Robert Lewis
ETA: in response to some of the discussion on this topic, I have written another more coherent version of this post. I’m a bit dismayed that certain critics of this post completely missed the point, which is that (in my opinion) writing science fiction is hard and not that science fiction is “about” the future. in particular, it is hard because the author has to create a plausible future setting and construct a compelling and coherent story in that setting. my discussion below is mostly about how modern and futuristic concepts and technology make it difficult to create logical conflicts, which often results in books or movies with huge gaping plot holes.
Bear with me.
I have written five complete novels. A western, two fantasies, and two science fiction stories. And as much as I truly love reading good science fiction, I have concluded that writing fantasy is superior for several reasons.
First, to write (good) science fiction you need to understand the future, which is impossible. so you fake it as best you can but you end up standing on very thin ice at times, and you end up just making stuff up, which sounds an awful lot like “fantasy” except with laser swords and monsters from space. But to write “fantasy” you only need to understand the past, which is less impossible and people expect you to make stuff up, as opposed to actually predict the future on some level.
Second, and more importantly, really good science fiction totally kills drama. think about your modern life for a moment. Thanks to the phone in your pocket, you’re never lost, never out of touch, never without access to detailed information. And you can photograph or video anything that happens so you have records or evidence. so you’re not going to have a lot of drama related to being lost, confused, or miscommunicating anything.
When an argument breaks out, someone can call Johnny and find out who he really likes and that will settle it. when your car goes off the road, OnStar calls the cops and you wake up in the hospital and not in Kathy Bates’ guest room. Even if you do wake up in Kathy’s house, your cell phone’s GPS can lead the cops to you. Technology is designed to solve basic (and not-so-basic) human problems, which are the classical drivers of conflict and drama.
A really good science fiction story is necessarily short because “there’s an app for that” and the problem suddenly goes away. The answer may surprise or even inspire you, but it probably won’t move you. Asimov’s and Dick’s short stories attacked lots of thoughtful ideas about the future and technology, but they were short stories because once you throw out the question and answer, the story is over. I suppose in my opinion a good SF story is an effective thought experiment, but not a human drama.
Let’s go farther. Imagine technology ten years from now, let alone five hundred years from now. Yes, you’ll have problems, but they will be boring unsexy problems. for example, you won’t ever get sick but you will live to be a frail little shell of a person at 150 years old. You’ll never be out of touch, but people will pester you all the time. Oh wait, that already happened.
When technology runs amok, it doesn’t lead to robot rebellions. it leads to hours on hold with tech support, or arguing with a chatbot, or reading online forums. when technology is abused, it’s used to steal money, usually. which leads to hours on the phone with the bank and credit people. And the hero who solves the tech problem isn’t swinging an axe or a gun, he’s uploading slightly different code to a server.
When the robots do rise up to kill us, John Connor won’t be firing a machine gun at them, he’ll be writing a program. And it won’t be a program that just makes it easier to shoot them, it will be a program that turns them off. this may be very clever, but it will not be fun to watch.
This leads to the Star Trek: The next Generation paradox: Most episodes of this show featured a nonsensical technology problem that required a nonsensical technology solution, which was usually achieved by an actor tapping at a computer console. so despite the fact that the science was junk, the portrayal of a SF hero in action was accurate (i.e., boring). not compelling. To make the episodes interesting, they needed to plug in a monster or a guy with a gun/sword to create some old fashioned, drawn-out violence.
The more you try to make science fiction “exciting,” the more you have to make the distant future look like the middle ages. thus, space opera.
From a conflict / drama point of view, the only thing science fiction does really well is let the hero talk to the villain. for example, on Star Trek the good captain can call up the bad captain on the big screen to trade heroic insults and ultimatums whenever they want. in fantasy, you have to come up with excuses for the hero to get to talk to the villain, especially when the good guy is a knight on a long walking quest to kill the evil warlord in a far Away Land.
So when writing science fiction, you’re constantly inventing excuses for why the advanced technology isn’t solving the big Problem. there has to be a power failure or a computer virus or a human error that keeps the all-powerful evil computer from knowing what’s going on and instantly stopping the hero from sneaking in and stealing the doo-dad or killing the bad guy.
Realistically, in the future, everything will be monitored or tracked or recorded and it will be incredibly difficult for an intrepid band of freedom fighters to do anything unless they spend a lot of time sitting with their laptops trying to disable security systems. And trust me, no one wants to read a novel that’s 300 pages of penetration testing logs and reports.
In science fiction, you spend half your time dreaming up a plausible world of the future and the other half of the time dreaming up reasons why it won’t work properly so you can make your story interesting. But making science fiction “interesting” (read: entertaining) almost always forces it into the realm of space opera (read: fantasy).
In traditional fantasy, also called the magical past, people are naturally confronting survival-level problems all the time, which makes for emotionally charged drama, as opposed to the psychologically engaging “drama” of science fiction.
And that’s why I think writing fantasy is better. because it’s easier. And I’m getting lazy in my old age.
ETA: And again, here is the slightly newer and better written version of this.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Urban Fantasy genre is being inundated with comic book adaptations. For those in the know, these ‘comic books’ are respectfully known as ‘graphic novels’ and there are a ton of them coming out in 2010/11.
