I’ve been reading up on the genre. Critical essays on science fiction. What will be expected of me.
Science fiction has, traditionally, been about exploring new worlds, usually in outer space. More than a hundred years ago, those stories were optimistic, with the modern, enlightened man going forth and conquering. Sometimes there’d be stories about people shrinking down to explore the microscopic worlds all around us, or the stories would be about time travel, alien invasion, utopian/dystopian futures, etc. Usually, science fiction is based on a premise that could almost maybe possibly someday happen. The writer would latch onto one of those backdrops and explore human nature in that setting.
Well, my writing definitely explores human nature, and other worlds; but Shatterrealm is about hidden dimensions— which I believe in, but not in the way they’re written about in my series. There’s actual scientific research about other dimensions, possibly with higher beings in them (higher beings I would call “angels,” “demons,” and “God”), but there is no evidence for anything in my fiction, worlds like our own or resembling our legends. Using those sciency words is really just an excuse for me to hand a submachine gun to an elf, crazy stuff like that— it’s my excuse for doing whatever I want, whenever the need arises.
The “new frontier” I’m exploring isn’t an envisioned government. It’s the “melting pot” thing. I think it’s finally happening. Racism isn’t gone, never will be gone, but my generation is reaching across the gap more easily than I think any other has in a long time. There are still religious tensions, but look at how Catholics and Protestants are finally talking to each other, and our pluralistic society has stirred a greater interest in studying and understanding other faiths and cultures. So the “frontier” that my Sci-Fi explores is the one that’s stretching before us right now, spiritually and emotionally. I can’t say I’m optimistic about it, but I’m not hopeless. I just want to challenge my readers to rise to the occasion, win that frontier with honor. That’s what I’m shooting for.
Maybe I should illustrate.
There are several, fairly well-developed dimensions in the first book alone (and they’ll be fleshed out later, should anyone have an interest in reading on). There’s a city called Glister, in a human world, which is just a little more advanced than our own, destroying itself with narcotics; there’s a seemingly utopian world of monsters we’ll call Eskras, whose only law is Peace (and in reality, that world has everything but peace); there are worlds very similar to ours, and there’s our world; there’s a world called Lenovra, once densely populated with what we’d call “fantasy creatures,” but they’ve either fled or turned mortal.
Because our characters are people who have found various ways to move through all these worlds, logically it follows that they’d all be very different. Our main characters are a recently reunited family. Carv can play church, but hates God; Steph is a devout Roman Catholic; Cam loves God but hates church; and Char is a philosopher and a self-assured prodigy, and he never quite settles into any spiritual category, though he calls himself Catholic.
Kristi is a black girl raised in a white culture, ardently Methodist; her neighbor Andrew is half-Mexican, a preacher’s son who doesn’t identify himself as such, has issues with his Catholic relatives, and never speaks his mind; Ron is “white trash,” an atheist living with his pantheistic mother, and he enjoys debating religious people; Julie is agnostic, and rather anti-religion; and Commander Arons is a Messianic Jew.
When I was 14, I liked to take these characters, throw them together in some world and just watch them interact. Or more accurately, make them fight. Obviously I now put much more effort into story structure and functional elements, and the arguments aren’t so one-sided, but the spirit of discovery is still there. I love my characters—they’re almost like real people to me—so I try to give them a little autonomy, instead of forcing them to do what I’d have them do in an idealistic story.
The characters mentioned above are all on the same side. They want to save lives. The real physical conflict, and the villain element, is taken care of by others. Don’t worry, you won’t need to learn all their names. And let me just say, there will never be one character who’s absolutely right about everything. They all have something to learn from each other. Some will change their minds about things, some won’t. The story is about a group of people lost in the universe and trying to survive. As for the human element, they’re not so much there for dissing one worldview and elevating another as they are just challenging the readers to think.
In case you’re wondering, I’m a conservative Christian (a Free Lutheran, to be exact). And in case my fellow Christians are worried, I do believe that Jesus Christ is the Way, Truth, and Life. The thing is, because I’ve accompanied this belief with such an arrogant attitude in the past, I’ve ended up estranging a lot of wonderful people. I feel the true, hardcore Christians in my culture are set apart to the extent that we’ve been isolated from our society. We have our set way of looking at the world. We don’t know how to communicate with people who disagree with us.
But to follow Christ, you need to share Him. To share Christ, you need to love. To love, you need to empathize. To empathize, you need to be able to understand another point of view. And you know what? I think… it’s okay… if you don’t convert every non-Christian you meet. Human hearts are, after all, God’s work. All He asks of us is the above.
In short: I hope to challenge Christians to look at others not as labels, but as people, and to look at themselves not as saviors, but as works in progress. Oh yeah, and obviously, I hope to entertain everyone with an exciting story!
They say that speculative fiction is a form of romantic literature, the dramatic stuff. I and most professional critics don’t usually praise the dramatic stuff (think Conan or Twilight), but it will always be popular because it appeals to our instinctive side. Personally, I think a work needs a message to be of real worth, but lately I’ve come to realize that we don’t just need intellectual stimulation, but emotional stimulation, too. I try to work both of those things into my stories.
