What will tomorrow bring? Near-future science fiction authors, in tackling this question, lie. We weave probable futures like any talented tarot reader, picking up on clues and telling you what you secretly wish to hear. This article centres on the art of lying and losing your virginity.
Probable futures emerge from the interplay of current technologies, geo-political trends, economics and other forces. Such forces shape future Earths, in the same way as climate, soils and other forces shape ecosystems in the natural world. Authors must expose themselves to quantum mechanics, synthetic biology, geoengineering, psychology and nanotechnology, and allow those pressures to act on their imagined environments. Remember, depressives may conjure dystopias, and delusional optimists, Utopias. And please note, if you frequent shopping malls, probable futures are skewed in favour of zombie apocalypse scenarios. Avoid malls.
Good liars weave lies, and make their lies as solid as any good psychotic delusion. Storytellers look for holes in their fabrications while finding more elegant methods of conveying the untruth, choosing to passively act on the reader’s imagination through showing rather than telling. Science fiction authors especially skirt the edge of possibility, constraining envisioned futures by hard science, however far they gaze into deep time.
And as for characterisation? Are characters automatons programmed with responses designed to carry forwards the plot? Living entities that shape the story? Biological machines who, in the interests of fecundity, evolved social structures from which emerged tales of gods and monsters that maximised social cohesion and therefore gene survival at the group level?
Prevarications and pretentiousness aside, let us suspend belief for a moment, and imagine that Nicholas Boyd Crutchley as the respected author of the Life & Shadow Series. Comments to this post accrue. Some love, many hate, and trolls thunder through the net to balance such love and hate. Over time, this article gets a few Likes, and a thumbs-up from a false god. Yay! Some, though not many, read Dream Alchemy and its sequels, and appreciate little ol’ me. Maybe, just maybe, I found my own religion (it’s happened before), charm many nubile disciples, and spread forth my message:
Go forth and join in orgies with economics, geo-politics, emerging technologies and other forces that add rhythm to the climaxes of your novelised probable futures, and by the breaking of your mind’s hymen, bloodily pierce the formulaic, contrived stories set high by the mediocracy.
Delusions of sexually frustrated grandeur aside, what makes a great liar? An author compelling you to believe the world they conjure within your noggin is real? A marketer that paints a book cover with credentials such as ‘Amazon Best Seller’, or, ‘If you loved Convergent, you’ll die for Detergent.’ Can a great liar make such a title go viral, and jump-start a following? After all, get one sheep through gate, then the rest will follow, and ye shall herd thy flock into the enclosure of lifelong reading obedience.
In conclusion, human beings lie to themselves, their children, their voters, and sometimes, readers. Owing to evolved pecking orders, mirror neurons, and Theory of Mind, we are all expert manipulators. Use this evolved trait in the writing and marketing of your masterpiece. Push your doubts aside, and lie.
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Nicholas Boyd Crutchley is the author of Dream Alchemy and the Forever Free Anthology. He writes science fantasy novels and short stories from a variety of genres.
