Why do I write science fiction? Because I don’t like rules.
That is, I don’t like your rules. We live in a world where apples grow on trees (money, unfortunately, doesn’t), water is necessary for life, and you can’t expose yourself in public without getting arrested. We live in a world of rules.
The rules are dictated by the environment we live in, our governments, and (in some cases) our conscience. I didn’t murder my husband last week when he left his dirty socks on the bedroom floor instead of putting them in the laundry basket. Why? Because if I did, I’d go to prison.
These rules are boring.
Necessary, but boring.
I find it far more intriguing to speculate about what might happen, and how the world might change, if the rules were different. In the future, for example, how might a government’s policy and regulations evolve to better confine and control its people? ID cards are so passé. It’d be much more convenient if we were all just barcoded like jugs of milk at the grocery store. Not enough people donate blood regularly, so let’s make it mandatory for all viable adults—once a month, like clockwork.
If most of the world was destroyed, and humans were very nearly extinct, how would we repopulate the planet? I imagine that birth control might be made illegal for married couples. Pairing would be encouraged, and we might see people marrying at an earlier age. Of course, the legal age of majority would then be lowered, to compensate for this.
I love world-building. I love making up new rules, then watching them play out. I love playing god, I guess, and that’s probably a control freak thing. World-building is fascinating to me. It’s intricate and detail-oriented, and the more anally retentive you are, the better. Your world has to be believable and livable and, above all, it has to make sense.
If you have dragons that snort skittles, you have dragons that snort Skittles. They can’t just suddenly start snorting Smarties just because you think that’d make a refreshing change. Likewise, if you’re writing about a viral outbreak, you’re going to need to give yourself a crash course in virology. How is the virus transmitted? What type of cells does it infect? How does it replicate? What are the symptoms? Is there a cure? This is a chain reaction. Your answer to one of those will most likely affect your answer to the rest. If you change one element, the entire thing may end up changing, and as you build your world, you need to be aware of any such conflicts in logic, timeline, biology (and whatever else) that might arise.
Action, meet Reaction.
Every single decision you make has repercussions.
Sometimes the research involved in this is tedious. Other times, it’s thrilling. I just spent three days immersed in British politics. It was dull and confusing, but it was absolutely vital. I’m currently having an interesting conversation with one of my editors over whether or not the British government would hold a ‘debate’ or a ‘summit’ in the Palace of Westminster. It seems ridiculous, but if you need the British government to hold a summit, and you also need to blow up that government in the Palace of Westminster, those two things somehow need to mesh. And it’s not good enough to answer the problem of “They don’t hold summits in the House of Commons” by saying “They do now”—that’s just lazy.
Don’t get lazy.
Don’t let your dragons snort Smarties.
Research, research, research.
You’ll write a better book because of it.
Keira Michelle Telford is an award winning dystopian SF author from British Columbia, Canada.
Couldn’t agree more. Reading something where the author have skipped the most basic research is a big turn-off.