It’s a particular challenge, writing science fiction.

If you’re writing fantasy, you can make the rules. It is what you say it is. Stick to your own rules, and you’re good.

If you’re writing something set in the “real world”, then usually you’re good to go. Maybe research. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, depending on which setting you picked.

Science fiction blends these two in a sometimes unclear way.

You get to make stuff up, but only up to a certain point. Where that point is depends on you. On the one hand, it is science fiction, which means some of it has to be, well, fiction. Not true or not yet true. If you knew how to really make some of the things you posit in the story work, you would probably abandon writing at least long enough to invent whatever-it-is, make your millions, and retire comfortably. On the other hand, it’s science, which means it has to be at least somewhat plausible and agree with a basic scientific literacy.

And even then, it depends on the writer, and at least somewhat on the reader. Is the science part of the fiction believable (or does it at least not fracture the first law of thermodynamics)? Sometimes, this is a bit like sales – “No, really! The first law of thermodynamics has exceptions! Let me show you. Come on, haven’t you always suspected it? Just privately, to yourself?” *wink* “Very smart of you. Let me tell you all about it!”

And then twenty or thirty years passes and the story proves much more fiction than science.

Or, as my husband put it while we were watching the final scene in Star Wars, “Laser cannons wouldn’t have recoil.”

I’ve never done this in a bookstore before.

I was looking for a specific book (okay, yes, that part has happened before. Several times.). Shelved nearby were other books, tempting books.

Tempting because I realized, “Hey, I know these authors”. Not in a we go out for pizza every Thursday kind of way. But in a I follow them on Twitter, I’ve checked out their blog, they seem like good people and good people probably have good stories kind of way. Please note that this isn’t a rule, more of a guideline.

When that happened with the first book, I snatched it off the shelf. I’d been wanting to read this author for a while, but was a bit chicken because he doesn’t write in a genre I enjoy. Or so I thought. Turns out I do like military science fiction, if this particular person writes it.

Then there was another book. Name recognition. I know of this person. She seems like a good person, an interesting person. Somebody with good stories. Let’s have her book, too!!

This is not the way books were purchased in the past. Usually it was cover attraction first, then page through checking out the story (which is why if an ebook sample contains only the book blurbs and a table of contents and doesn’t let me at least eyeball a few pages of story, I don’t buy the book. Probably I’m missing out. But them’s the rules), and then buy the book. Perhaps after that, looking online to see what the author’s story is, as much of it as they care to share, anyways. Cover, story, author. Not author, story, cover.

Twenty years ago, the author’s name was just another line of type on the cover to me. It was the story I engaged with. I’m glad I’ve gotten with the times (after prodding from my agent, who was right), however belatedly.

I found two new books I’d never have found otherwise, from doing it backwards, in a bookstore.