On writing sci-fi

I don’t know why I write sci-fi. I know the circumstances that led me to writing sci-fi, but I don’t have a single, easily digestible, catchy and all-encompassing reason for preferring sci-fi over, say, family sagas. I read widely, including family sagas.

Authors I enjoyed growing up included British classics like Doris Lessing and Aldous Huxley, French romantics and realists like Flaubert and Balzac, and Portuguese poets like Fernando Pessoa and Sophia de Mellon Breyner Andresen. Among my favourite writers I list Margaret Atwood, Isabell Allende, Milan Kundera, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Dostoevsky. A bit of a mixed bag, isn’t it? The list continues. Sci-fi is wonderful, but there is so much to be found elsewhere.

Supposedly, sci-fi readers look for a sense of wonder, while literary fiction readers prefer a sense of recognition. But even this summary sounds gimmicky – for isn’t genre fiction (including sci-fi) also seeking to ignite the reward paths of recognition? They might not enjoy reading about boring day-to-day life, but when sci-fi readers pick up a book, they want to rediscover wonder, over and over.     

Here's one of the reasons why I write sci-fi – I love learning about science. The world is fascinating. Science deals with the world in a methodical way, breaking it down into logical elements to better understand it. When I get hooked on a topic, I spend weeks reading about it, completing courses, filling notebooks with summaries and ideas, building upon this knowledge to create a story that can bring my obsession to life, and make justice to it. Chemistry, physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics, you name it. I’m not disciplined enough to master any of the hard sciences though, and I don’t think I could write sci-fi if I did. When I understand just a little, it is much easier to produce (and believe) the figments of my imagination.   

A few years ago, during a writing course, the tutor asked us to make a list of topics that personally interested us. Most people had about five to ten bullet points. I wrote a full page, over twenty topics and counting. Hard sciences featured, as did soft sciences, philosophy, arts, religion, and also mundane topics like ice-cream, money, and sex. I’m still unravelling the possibilities. If I lived long enough, I suspect I would write family sagas at some point.