Sticking to the Facts.

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

Kelly’s daughter asks: How did you find the facts (that inform your book)?

That’s a pretty good question. As a writer of Science Fiction, I’ve found that facts about the future are a little thin on the ground.

Initially, I thought that, because of this, it would be easy to write Sci-fi. I could write what I liked and nobody could tell me that I’d got it wrong.

But I soon came up against a major problem.

To write convincingly about the worlds of the future, you need to know the science of the present. Not only that, you need to know what’s on the horizon, in terms of where new discoveries are leading and what practical applications might result.

And that’s not all, whatever you invent based on what we have now has to sound true. And be possible.

It all means that there’s a LOT of research needed before you can create a realistic setting, or technology for your characters to interact with. I read scientific journals and scour the internet, for facts that can be extrapolated and fitted into the world of the future.

I’ve talked about this idea before. In fact, there’s a name for the imaginary technology of the future, as invented by authors. You can find out more about it in this post.

In all my research, there is one important thing I’ve discovered.

That we already have about 90% of the technology we need to survive on an alien planet. I realised that aircraft and submarines both make it possible to live in conditions that would otherwise be fatal to humanity.

These, and other things, just need a bit of tweaking to adapt to their new role in my stories.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know by leaving me a comment.

While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.

Until next time.

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