When I was fourteen, I endured an 18 hour operation on my back and a 6 month recovery. I note very proudly that I entered this operation with a blood pressure calm enough to make the nurses question me and was rolled into the operating room singing "Heaven on their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar (Murray Head. The GOOD kind).
With significantly less pride, I admit to having been in the hospital bed at home for far too long, taking slow transitions into normal clothing and the shower, which had become like the Eye of Sauron, evil and yet watching me accusatorily.
It was during this time that I became enamored with Star Wars.
I remember the very moment. Episode VI was on Spike network and during my once-daily, nursing home-esc walk that day, I only thought about when I might see it again and made it my task as I dropped back in the bed that night to find it on TV once more.
I ended up buying the entire collection and watching one episode every night repeatedly for three weeks. Dad, being the champion that he is, joined me every night as well, though I wasn't really in the position to flip over and make sure he didn't have his computer on his lap as well.
This series, nonetheless, was what sparked my love of science fiction. I began to write it.
Not Breakers, however. Breakers came a little later. Here is what leads me to my point.
Look at Star Wars. Look at Breakers. Look at Star Wars. Look at Hunger Games. Big differences. All science fiction.
Welcome to evolution.
While I am still in love with the galactic epic of Star Wars-style sci-fi, I found myself writing Breakers the next year, unconsciously, in quite a different fasion. The evolution of science fiction.
Sci-fi today is dark. In fact, by now, it could probably use some lightening up. But let's face it. People like dark.
It moves them.
It squirms inside and makes them feel something.
I am terrified of a world that cannot explore darkness. We need darkness to contrast the light and to understand our feelings on it.
Science fiction today, as opposed to the futuristic, technological, and cultural fascination with Star Wars sci-fi, is quite simply an experiment of that darkness.
Today, science fiction is humanity's response to dark situations. (Can we get that in a quote box somewhere? Hang on...)
How do we react when the worst happens? How, or WILL, we triumph as a human race?
Grandpa telling one of HIS many stories.
That, truly, is why I write science-fiction and fantasy. As I told my grandpa (who I love deeply but who initially shunned all sci-fi and fantasy), these genres are amazing because they PROVE that humans are the same everywhere, no matter the time, world, or struggle. I will take this directly from my journal: "Despite my best efforts of placing my characters in vividly foreign, fantastic, and grave circumstances, they prove to me again and again who they are. They are me. They are the same.
They are human."
I don't know if the evolution of sci-fi says something about our society. I think we've always had a little darkness. Maybe this type of fiction forces us to look at the society we already have and how close we might be to such terror. Or maybe we want to know we'd be okay anyway, fighting it and standing amidst the ruin. I know my books sure surprise me.
So yes. I proudly put "Science fiction" on the genre for Breakers. Because it's humans responding to a very dark situation.
And they respond with -- wouldn't you guess it? -- humanity.
Love to all.
S
They are human."
I don't know if the evolution of sci-fi says something about our society. I think we've always had a little darkness. Maybe this type of fiction forces us to look at the society we already have and how close we might be to such terror. Or maybe we want to know we'd be okay anyway, fighting it and standing amidst the ruin. I know my books sure surprise me.
So yes. I proudly put "Science fiction" on the genre for Breakers. Because it's humans responding to a very dark situation.
And they respond with -- wouldn't you guess it? -- humanity.
Love to all.
S
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