DEFINITION

Science fiction stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses.

Think of Frankenstein. Take the scientific element out of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel and what is left? A failed medical student and not much more.

You may be surprised to realize that most of the books and magazine stories published under the science fiction rubric fail to meet this criterion. The science fiction category is very broad: it includes fantasy, horror, and speculative tales of the future in which science plays little or no part at all.

From here on, when I say science fiction, I mean stories that meet the definition given above. Other areas of the field I will call SF. The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.

THREE REASONS

The three reasons this book concentrates on science fiction story-writing are:

1. In today’s commercial fiction market, SF is one of the few areas open to new writers, whether they are writing short stories or novels. Mysteries, gothics, romances, and other categories of commercial fiction are much more limited and specialized, especially for the short-story writer, but SF is as wide open as the infinite heavens. SF magazines actively seek new writers, and SF books consistently account for roughly 10 percent of the fiction books published each year in the United States. The SF community is quick to recognize new talent.

2. Science fiction presents to a writer challenges and problems that cannot be found in other forms of fiction. In addition to all the usual problems of writing, science fiction stories must also have strong and believable scientific or technical backgrounds. Isaac Asimov often declared that writing science fiction was more difficult than any other kind of writing. He should have known; he wrote everything from mysteries to learned tomes on the Bible and Shakespeare. If you can handle science fiction skillfully, chances are you will be able to write other types of fiction or nonfiction with ease.

3. Science fiction is the field in which I have done most of my work, both as a writer and an editor. Although most of my novels are written for the general audience, since they almost always deal with scientists and high technology they are usually marketed under the SF category. My eleven years as a magazine editor at Analog and Omni were strictly within the science fiction field, and I won six Science Fiction Achievement Awards (called the Hugo) for Best Professional Editor during that time.