What Would Make Science Fiction Better

The Year of Aesthetics №42 2022–10–08

For Jack and Shay

1. Current science should not be obviously wrong , writers often allow totally spurious science into there work that violate general laws or possibility. This removes the suspension of disbelief from the scientific audience and in turn reduces the investment for the reader of the genuinely good ideas of the work. These unforced errors make the reader hyperaware of weakness in your fiction.
2. Fictitious science should be vague and left open to the imagination when possible. The new ideas do not have to be fully fleshed out, and are harder to scrutinize if they have a vagueness to them. It is better to leave them partially explained and less open to scrutiny. Frank Herbert doesn’t go into grand detail on the Holtzman effect or engine he just says they can do things. Giving what something can do with less how or why allows imagination of the reader to do the heavy lifting and invests them more in the story. They are asking how and why and thinking about for the author and allows the author to make fewer unforced errors. A grand example from old texts is Adam and Eve, think of the story then read it and see how vague it is and how much your imagination has added to the sparse story on the page.
3. Sci-fi is very self referential. In the Jaunt by Steven King there are two references to stories he is directly stealing from. I thought of both stories right before he mentioned them. Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut is full of tales that end, end well and make no reference to anything before he also follows all the rules above.
4. Sci-fi struggles with a trajectory problem. (Shay Hill’s conception) Sci-fi often lacks feels possibility, as the characters are often put on a trajectory and have little choice, the feel like ballistic objects following a single mathematically governed path, or if they make a choice off the path they seem outlandish. In Welcome to the Monkey House science imposes choices and sometimes we make the wrong ones, but his characters make choices. He plays with the idea of trajectory to good effect but he is very aware of this and is toying with the idea not following it blindly in The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5. The problem → some science → Solution often leads to less interesting stories. It is a weakness of Dune and 2001: A Space Odyssey while forgivable even the best often fall into a trap of fate and lack of investment in free will decisions of the characters.
5. More closure and less milking. I love Dune and David Mitchell meta-novel, yet God Emperor of Dune would have been a better ending than Dune, Chapter House. In Mitchell’s case I worry that he is stringing things out too far and at the point of making things hard to finalize. Nine novels in may it be time for something new, this is hard to say about a favorite author, but I think he produces less with the weight of his universe on his back. I think more sci-fi at the novella or short story level will be a good thing. Serialization and setting up the next novel gets tiresome.
6. End the Scigasam and Horrorgasm, finale. In the Jaunt the story ends well then we have a tacked on horrogasam, this happens in many sci-fi and horror books. Horror can not be left to our imagination, we can’t get open ended stories where we are unsure of the ending. 2001 left us with a space baby and possibility. Alien leaves us with Ripley asleep floating through space. Sometimes alone and unsure is a good way to end things.