Before the Event

Much to my surprise I find myself writing a science fiction novel. This was not what I’d planned and in fact, given that I was in the middle of reworking my second novel and developing a third, it’s bloody inconvenient. But there’s worse. Much worse.

Despite having worked in the space industry for 35 years, I’ve never been much interested in science fiction, nor had a high opinion of it as a literary form. It always struck me that although the ideas were often strong, the quality of the writing and characterisation was generally mediocre: so I stopped reading it.

Consequently, when the idea for a sci-fi book struck me, I didn’t know if it was original. It seemed unlikely, because there’s few things so rare as a genuinely new idea; but I needed to know if it had already been done thoroughly and well. So I used the generous parting gift from my ESA colleagues to buy every sci-fi classic and anthology I could lay my hands on and then gave myself a crash course on the past 70 years of the genre.

What I discovered was something that I probably knew all along, without ever having articulated it to myself. As the editors of one anthology put it, science fiction is “the most important genre produced by our post-industrial age, as its authors invite us to examine exaggerated or altered versions of the realities we have invented, so we might look at these afresh” (Science Fiction for Survival, Valley Press, 2019). To put it another way, the best sci-fi is not really about science and it uses fiction only for convenience. It’s about philosophy, religion and society; and especially about how technological advances drive their evolution.

It turns out that I was right about the genre being stronger in ideas than in other literary qualities: although some sci-fi authors are masters of their art and craft, the genre’s relative weakness in these areas has always led it to be regarded as a poor relation by pretentiously intellectual critics. (Brian Aldiss pointed out that he had four histories of French literature on his shelves and not one of them even mentioned Jules Verne.)

The ideas, though, are far above most of those that can be found in any other genre, as is the imagination and vision of where humanity is going. Nowhere else are the critical factors that will determine our fate so well considered. What passes for “literary fiction” has become a graveyard of self-absorption, whilst science fiction, whether in print or on screen, remains in every sense vital.

As it happens, the idea that sprang into my mind late last year seems not to have been much explored by others, though many have circumnavigated it, rather like those early seafarers who sailed right around Australia without ever chancing upon it, or daring to probe very far into the interior if they did.

My working title is “After the Event”. I thought about calling it “Aftermath” but that’s already in use by others. If the writing goes well, I may post a teaser here when it’s close to publication; and perhaps I’ll discuss some of the sub-themes as I develop them. In the meantime, I still have a pile of science fiction books to read and I’m pretty sure that what I find in their pages will make some profound changes to what I have in mind. For the first time in a long time, I am excited by what I’m writing and have only a rough map of where it will take me.