Ask Big Questions to Write Good Science Fiction

In her speculative story about a feminist utopia, Hossain explores the question of what it would be like to live in a society where the gender roles were reversed, and women held all the power. She takes that question and runs with it. In doing so, she creates a world that plays with the rules she knows as a woman living in Bangladesh, and flips them. Another author who did this well was Malorie Blackman, who flips the Black and White power structure of apartheid in Noughts and Crosses. You can also see it in Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, which explores a society without the restrictions of fixed assigned genders.

Du Bois helped to found the NAACP, and it should come as no surprise that his science fiction deals with themes of racism. In “The Comet”, the Black protagonist finds himself traveling through New York City with a White woman, the two of them the sole survivors of a catastrophic event. While they grapple with the paradigm shift of conflicting societal taboos and their need for human connection, Du Bois examines whether a society that is racist can overcome its prejudices in order to survive.

This is one of the key themes in many apocalyptic stories, and can be seen in Avatar, as well as in the trope of the Monstrous Other (where maybe humans were the real monsters all along).

Science fiction can bend minds as well as reality, and Borges is famous for his mind-melting use of nonfiction elements to build believable, academic labyrinths of possibility. It’s hard to even call “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” a story when it takes the form of interconnected encyclopedia entries and academic correspondence. Through it, Borges creates “evidence” of a unique and contradictory world. When it was published, it became even more believable as Borges’ contemporaries played along, writing about the places he had invented as if they were real.

Similarly, by applying Nozick’s Experience Machine to a modern context, The Matrix explores the nature of reality and perception. And let’s not forget the classic blunder of the radio play of War of the Worlds. It was so realistic that it convinced an entire country that an alien invasion was underway. Here in Ecuador, the local adaptation led to riots. If your story can convince readers of a different way of perceiving reality, then you have made an impact. You will be remembered.

Other authors who have been influenced by Borges are Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon.

Some of the best science fiction stories are allegories, or commentaries on current events. We’ll probably see a surge in pandemic stories within the next five years, as well as “trapped in a room” stories, as the collective consciousness processes the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this case, Tenn tried to represent the effect of the Cold War on the inhabitants of the places where the war was physically fought. He used his depiction of the destructive liberation (and “re-liberations”) of Earth as two alien superpowers battle each other. He specifically wanted to “point out what a really awful thing it was to be a Korean (and later a Vietnamese) in such a situation.” Science fiction gives writers and readers the opportunity to inhabit perspectives that differ from their own, and this can have real power.

This is even better when the perspectives are own voices authors.

Blish uses pantropy (the concept of human genetic modification for purpose of survival on other planets) to explore how societies evolve. “Surface Tension” covers multiple generations of a new, tiny human society, formed from microscopic cellular organisms underwater. Many people think that the “science” in science fiction refers only to the technology or machines that we use, but other disciplines can be a rich source of inspiration.

Our world is full of weird and unexplained things (fungus that turns ants into zombies, perhaps? Chemical secretions floating in the clouds above Venus?), and changing one variable in the great experiment of life can fuel a whole creative universe. Keeping abreast of current scientific discoveries helps science fiction authors to stay relevant.

Jo Miles’s story about sentient trees that live through a symbiotic relationship with tea fish that inhabit their cores is magical and strikingly original. However, just being unique isn’t enough to carry a story; what really gives this story impact is the tug between love and duty.

Finding strong motivational forces that are at the core relatable to any reader means that you can connect with your reader on a deeper level. Then you can build a story around the conflict of satisfying those themes, which pull against each other. The most common dichotomy in science fiction is the struggle between good and evil. Good science fiction authors know that it’s not the only option.

St Clair is dazzlingly original and as early as 1950 she was pushing back against the trope of humans saving the universe through clever problem-solving that was prevalent in pulp science fiction. Her flair for the absurd and her unashamed authenticity give her stories the weird flavor that can be found in Douglas Adams’, Neil Gaiman’s and Iain M Banks’ writing. She created her own twisted logic and then pushed it to its limits, as in “Prott”, where a scientist becomes mentally unhinged through the act of observing alien life forms.

With the exception of “The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea Fish,” all the stories I have mentioned in this post are included in The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. It is a wonderful collection of stories by some of the greatest minds in science fiction through history.