Hello everyone

I’m back. A little worse for wear as I write this, but I’m gaining strength daily even if my stamina feels somewhat shot. I would not recommend pneumonia to anyone. If you’re a smoker and had pneumonia, I think you’d regret every last cigarette. A good excuse to give up. It was bad enough me being a non-smoker.

Health is one of the most precious things about life. Jeopardise it at your own peril cos you don’t get many chances of living a second time.

My thanks to the staff of Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton for looking after me for seven days and my Mum for the rest of the time.

Best moment in hospital was having the local Town Crier and his wife (Hi Fred and Shirley) arriving in full regalia late Saturday afternoon after working in the town centre. Certainly added some unusual class to the ward and I’d loved to have seen the faces turn as they arrived and left.

My thanks to all those who sent get well cards. They were appreciated. If you have email addresses please email me if I don’t have your address. Anyone else who tried emailing me from the 19 July to the 07 August, can they please e-mail again. Not being near my e-mail box for nearly five weeks left it in something of a spam-full mess.

My thanks to Stephen Hunt for stepping in at short notice last month on the editorial and sorry to the rest of you for leaving the reviews in the lurch although I suspect this month will more than make up for it. There’s some great material in there.

Before you think I’m losing my edge, I wasn’t that idle in hospital. Apart from warning the nurses when some of the cardiac patients were having problems, I did a lot of reading and ended up doing notes for a few articles. Fitting in the time to type them up should be interesting, especially as I’ve worked myself through some e-book samples since getting home.

Part of getting better is keeping the mind occupied and did I keep it busy. When am I ever idle anyway? So much to do, only so many hours in a day.

Enough about my health, let’s give you something to ponder over. Something that keeps coming to my attention going through the samples I’m going through is that far too many of you don’t really know how to use your imaginations. Yeah! It’s a real problem, so I thought it might be useful to throw out some pointers for you all to ponder on. Even non-writers might learn something from this editorial.

I mean, everyone knows the easy stuff like clones, ESP, starships, aliens and alien planets - although even these need a little or a lot of work in making them realistically alien - etc, etc. These things are so well-used that they can be instantly identified by the reader as soon as they’re used, without necessarily adding too much descriptive baggage.

The use of the imagination where these elements are concerned is to do something with them that hasn’t been done before. That’s a bit trickier and often involves checking around other authors who’ve dealt with such subjects in the past so you don’t follow their paths. Fresh approaches are always tough and probably why so many authors stay within certain safe territory and concentrate on characters and plot rather than innovation.

Even if you’re successful at doing the above, it helps to build up your plot incorporating such ideas. However, the use of your imagination doesn’t stop there. What makes a plot Science Fiction and not any other genre is largely to do with ensuring that the plot can’t freely work in any other genre.

That largely means the solution has to be something that is unworkable in any other genre and at the same time not being so fantastic that it stretches credibility out the window. That doesn’t mean you can’t misdirect a reader along the way, but the correct solution should be deductible from the information within the story. Science Fiction is the ideas genre, and its writers have to be a little smarter than the readers it attracts, if you want to hold their head above water (or whatever liquid you prefer).

A lot of the above is really the easy part. The art of good story-telling is being able to convey a reality into the reader’s head sufficiently so they end up seeing the reality along side you, the writer. This is one area where many a writer falls foul. There’s a need to live the reality so simple mistakes aren't made or don’t happen. It has to be embellished with you heart and soul to make it work.

You have to be there yourself wholeheartedly. This can happen in any genre but with SF it’s far easier to be found out if you make a mistake or don’t do sufficient research let alone not do any at all. There are too many people who know the facts. You can’t fake it! Use the wrong period of technology or get something basic wrong, and your spell over the reader is broken.

Invalidating a known scientific principle without prior explanation is also asking for trouble. If antigravity or faster-than-light travel exists then ensure it has an influence on all walks of life. Any major invention will find its way into every use possible. One only has to witness the use of silicon chips in more things than computers to see people taking advantage of new technology. To ignore the implications of any radical change in your reality tends to indicate the writer hasn’t thought the ideas through sufficiently enough.

With Science Fiction, every step of the way on every scene in the story, there is a need to ensure that the reality holds true.

It needs to come to life for the reader if they’re to believe in it. If your story is set in the future, past or similar reality then everything has to be examined. Nothing should be taken for granted. Everything has to be considered. It makes writing Science Fiction a lot harder than other genres. It’s often said that SF authors are born to write Science Fiction.

The mindset is sufficiently different in the lateral sense that it’s easier to write SF than other genres. It doesn’t mean that a different genre author can’t turn their hand to SF, just that it might take more work to get it right. Science Fiction is regarded as one of the harder genres to write in yet there are very few SF writers willing to make the transition to more ‘simpler’ genres even if they pay more simply because it isn’t so challenging. SF, at its base, is a testing ground for mind-games despite the fact that elements from all other genres can be employed within it.

Creating realities doesn’t have a set formula. There has to be some sort of game-plan notes even if some detail is created on the fly as the story gets written. A lot of the time that comes about simply because something hadn’t been considered originally. It isn’t always that necessary to create a complete reality just sufficient to cover the stories details in question but not tie anything into too big a knot if the reality is visited again.

The important thing is not to forget what you’ve used or the readers will crucify you for every major mistake or inconsistency. This is often the problem area for the novice-writer. There’s a tendency to forget that if you, as the writer, is getting bored of the story how can you expect the reader to keep up his or her own enthusiasm? Writing imaginative stories is also a matter of personal discipline and experience in ensuring that the reality holds everyone’s interest.

It’s far better to learn this from practicing in short stories than rush into novel-length with no real prior experience. Is it any wonder that such realities are visited time and time again as old friends if the enthusiasm for them still exists?

A SF story that gets some accolade is usually because it hits the spot for a lot of readers. The writing standard is a lot higher than the old pulps from the pre-70s. The research more intensive. Imagination has to sparkle to the same degree. If you believe that all the best ideas in SF have been used up then you don’t deserve to be attempting to write SF.

If you try to compare your material to something existing already then it’s not imaginative enough. The old adage that creativity is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration couldn’t be any more accurate although reading and researching a lot can often find things other writers might have missed. Lateral thinking in whatever you look at will always seek out alternative possibilities. If you want to be any good as an SF writer then you really need to cultivate that imagination.

It helps to use the imagination off the page or computer screen. Real lateral thinkers do it whether they want to or not. Everything has possibilities and is applied to real life as much as fiction. Combined with practical creativity also ensures something is done about it. Everything adds to the life experience and can be fed back into any writing activity.

Most important of all, it differentiates creative writers from those who merely read and look enviously at those who write. Bridging the gap isn’t often as difficult as people dream. Just requires the right incentive and it isn’t always money.

As I’m an editor who can convince you to walk across an open volcano to remove excess body hair, I think I’ll call that an evening. I see other possibilities as well.

Thank you and good night

Geoff Willmetts

editor: SFCrowsnest.com

Food for thought: The next time you watch the first ‘Terminator’ film pay special attention to when the cyborg attacks the police station and ask yourself this question: Was Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese the only civilians in the station that night? Considering the number of cops in the station, you’d have thought the people they’d arrested might have joined in against the firefight especially when they’re being fired upon. Thing is, I didn’t see any at all. Did you?? Were they all evacuated when he drove through the twin doors?

(Less Serious) Thought For The Month: There were plans to do a young Batman and Robin TV series after the success of the ‘Clark And Lois’ and ‘Smallville’ TV series. It became a non-starter when the title, ‘Bruce And Dick’, was mentioned … for somewhat obvious reasons.

PS: For those keeping track, I’m about 17 months behind with going through the e-book samples (do you want me to actually reel off the actual month last year?). Thank you for your patience but let me know if you’ve sold or changed address so I can change my pile.