The Secret to Science Fiction

Science Fiction has been one of the most popular genres for books, movies, and tv shows over that past century. While much of it is very good, there are also many science fiction stories that have come out very poorly. The secret to science fiction is to not get to carried away with the impossible, and to limit yourself to strict and well defined rules.

In some of the more bizarre and poorly received science fiction stories, liberties are often taken to an extreme, without any real reason or expectation. These over the top events are often viewed as a deus ex machina by the audience who then instead of appreciating, and enjoying the story feel cheated and betrayed.

As such it is very important for good science fiction to be governed by hard and fast rules, while also not drifting to far away from reality to the point where the story is no longer believable. Some of the best science fiction does very little to change reality, for example the tv show Jericho was set in a common day realistic type city. While the situation surrounding the town, and the actions of the government were a tad over the top, nothing really pushed the limits on what was believable to far. Joss Weldon's series Firefly was also successful in limiting itself, by simplifying the future universe the story is told in by including things like space ships, but limiting the concept of laser weapons, and introducing no alien species.

Isaac Asimov who was the best science fiction author ever, followed these guidelines to a fault. All of his robot stories were directly related to the three simple laws of robotics that he developed for them, and besides the robots (and minimal space travel), had these series taking place entirely within the quirks and bounds of these simple rules. By not complicating things and by simply looking at the basic sociological, and technological changes that would come from simply having this small change in our society he was able to keep his stories both relevant, and believable.

Another twist on doing this is to take a perfectly normal universe and change just one thing in it. Asimov did this in his novel Nightfall which featured a planet no different from out own except for the fact that it had multiple suns positioned such that true darkness would only occur once every couple thousand of years. Spiderman also started on a simple premise, which took a normal kid and made it possible for him to weave webs and to climb walls. It wasn't until later when more bizarre and strange villains were needed did the over the top oddities begin to supplant the simplicity of the series.

Minority Report is another movie that handled this well, and while the infrastructure and such was technologically upgraded it was done so believingly with simple things like sleeker automated cars and eye scanners, rather than with robots and particle weapons. The premise of the movie was the basis of the only real reach in technology which was the ability to predict the future, once again proving how a small change is enough to create a dynamic plot.

Without a sound set of simple rules in place, science fiction falls apart, and become less interesting, and more about over the top cheesiness. The entire secret with science fiction is to keep things basic and not get to carried away with trying to create a world to different from our own.