Fiction, Science

I started my first self-initiated, independent writing project during the summer between third and fourth grades.  I was nine.  The movie E.T. was released that June and I loved it.  My project was something between a comic book and a kid's picture book (e.g., The Cat In The Hat).  I guess I had trouble even then following conventions:  rather than write a "once upon a time" story, I was building a fictional Encyclopedia of Alien Lifeforms.  Each entry was introduced with a labeled diagram of an alien, identifying the important anatomical systems (sense organs, circulatory and nervous systems, etc.) followed by written descriptions of home planets, common characteristics, and--possibly the most inventive of the writing--how they differed from human beings.

By mid-winter I'd created perhaps forty different entries in my book.  One morning during a snowy, windy walk to a waiting school bus, my entire collection of work was caught up in a gust, blowing every page across the cold, wet snow.  I could never bring myself to try to recreate it: the project was lost to the cruelty of nature.

As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief around science fiction.  I liked science too much to allow it to be cast aside for the convenience of fiction.  Some time around seventh grade I was assigned to read a Ray Bradbury story (I forget which one) and hated it so much that I never returned to the genre.  And I became increasingly intolerant of sloppy science in fiction, especially time travel.

I began to come around finally when I read Machio Kaku's Hyperspace from the mid-nineties.  He put forth a hypothesis I could buy.  1) Time travel required a machine (rather than being just an "action") because it required control of an immense amount of energy. 2) Travel through time could only happen as long as the machine existed; you couldn't go back in time before it, and you couldn't go forward beyond when it stopped functioning.  This theory made time travel a slightly more acceptable fictional tool.

As I continued to learn about developments in modern science, as I encountered increasingly bizarre and nearly-fictional scientific theories, I eased up on my resistance to suspending disbelief in science fiction.  In some cases, I have to suspend disbelief to trust science fact.

Being so unfamiliar with science fiction, I feel I would be unfairly encroaching to write it.  Also, I suspect the genre's community would think I was making fun: there's no way I could write science fiction with a serious tone.  To me, it's frequently too "out there" for me to be serious.  I had an idea about an alien fact-finding mission: a series of observations of humanity from the perspective of an outsider--in the extreme.

Most of the beings have a tissue growth at the top of their bodies.  It is a fine, soft, flexible growth, possibly originally developed to keep their brains warm.  Those that have it seem to be excessively fixated on it.  In fact, many of those that don't seem equally fixated on recreating it, either with a synthetic substitute or through chemical-induced regrowth.  They shape it, twist it, and even discolor it.  Vast amounts of resources are used on it, though we do not observe any sort of greater social value derived from the expense and effort.  We assume it is for some sort of mating purpose, though as of yet have not found any consistency in its effect.

The trouble is, in writing, you have to satisfy two audiences: readers and yourself.  Regardless of how entertaining such a work might be to the rest of the world, my lingering angst over science fiction keeps me from feeling compelled to write much more than the above.