Science Fiction: The Story of an Idea

Science fiction begins with an idea and follows it. One thing about the world is changed — its materials, its knowledge, its possibilities — and the story works out what that change would do. The change is sometimes called the novum. The genre's promise is a larger frame: an idea seen from inside. Its discipline is consistency, because whatever the change is, the world must behave accordingly. It is often mistaken for a genre about the future. It is more often about the present, entered from an angle where we can finally see it. It overlaps with fantasy in method and differs in machinery, with horror when the idea frightens, and with literary fiction when the idea is carried by people rather than by events. Characteristic techniques - One change, kept clean, rather than four at once. - The ordinary business of the world seen through it: work, school, family, rent. - Consequences shown through a single person's day. - The cost of the change, made concrete. - No explanation dressed as dialogue; the characters take their world for granted. An original example, written for this platform The shift started at four now, which meant the tram at half past three, which meant leaving the children with the neighbour and paying her in the currency she preferred, which was tea. Nobody in the depot thought the change was strange. We had gone to four-hour days in the year the water went, and we had all agreed, and the agreeing was the part that took longest. At the depot we speak to the machines politely. It is not required. It has never been required. My supervisor says it costs nothing and I say it is the only thing in the building that will outlast us both, and then we go and do four hours of work that used to take eight. How the example works One change is at the centre — a shortened working day — and everything else is ordinary: trams, neighbours, tea as payment. The world's strangeness arrives through what people take for granted, and the story asks what such a change would do to the way people talk to the things around them. Nothing is explained, and no technology is described. Practical guidance State your change in one sentence, then list three consequences before you draft. Give the story a person with a working life rather than a scientist with a theory, and keep the jargon in the characters' mouths, where it belongs, rather than in the narration. Exercise to try Change one ordinary thing — sleep, memory, work, the weather — and write one page in which the change is visible in a household routine and is never explained. Revision tips Check the idea is consistent throughout and that nothing else has quietly changed. Cut every paragraph that explains the world to the reader. Check that the story would still matter if the idea were removed; if it would not, the idea is scenery. Finally, check that the consequences land on people rather than on a diagram.