Science and fiction are both hard to write, which makes science fiction doubly harder. You need to present a situation as possible without alienating your audience. You need to sound credible. Your science needs to be sound. You need to have a great command of a language and you need to awaken your reader’s imagination. Oh, and yes, you have to do research.

I write mainly historical fiction, but I’ve found that science fiction and historical fiction have the same requirements and suffer from the same bad writing habits. Both require a lot of research, but when written badly, both science fiction and historical fiction sound like boring textbooks.

Nevertheless, good writing is always backed by good research. An “AHA!” experience always rests on a good, solid historical or scientific (or both!) foundation.

If you’re a science fiction writer who wants to do research, then here are a few research sources for you.

1. Google Scholar is your friend

Whenever I have to do research off a college campus – where I can’t access journal articles so easily – I always turn to Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a good jump off point for you to access research articles in any field. You can type in anything from “mutations in plants” to “space exploration” and get the latest in research.

You’ll be working with primary sources, too, so the language will be different; but if you can consult with friends, then you’ll get a clearer picture of how research works and what goes into the science.

Learn how to read abstracts, which contain info on the research problem and its importance. Go through the reference list so that you can get more articles and branch out farther into the field. You’ll find that the research your reading is the product of so much work that has already gone before.

2. Watch news documentaries that feature science and tech breakthroughs

Now, it’s time to look at the science itself. If you don’t have the time to wade through journal articles, catch news and features that look at the newest in science. These reports will distill the research, but they can give you ideas of what you can do more research on, and who you can contact to ask questions.

Take down notes on who says what, and who the detractors are. These can give you ideas on who to talk to later on, and what to do research on when you finally get the time to sit down in front of your computer.

3. Use popular science magazines as jump-off points

Still have no time to go online or watch TV? Subscribe to science and tech magazines such as Discover, Popular Science, National Geographic, or Scientific American. You can read these magazines before bed, or whenever you have free time on your hands. Again, this is a good jump off point, the way that Google scholar and TV can help get you ideas. These are distillations of research, so you’ll still need to go to primary sources. Nevertheless, take down notes and see what research is being done!

4. Attend popular science talks

Here’s another jump off point that can help you get connections to the scientific world, and even widen your circle of friends. Check with your local college or university for popular science talks. These can include symposiums inside the school, or even a small talk at a local cafe. These talks can help you get ideas, find out the latest about science, or even put you in touch with science writers who are as interested in science as you are.

5. Visit your local science museum regularly

Science museums can give you a full view of the history of science, from the fossils to the modern machines that power our world. Look at the history of science and see if you can spot trends in how mankind has progressed. Then, extend your reasoning to the future. How will we live? Where will we be? What will technology be like? Who will we respect?

These resources can help you get a glimpse of science, both as a changing field, and as one that has affected our everyday lives. Don’t forget to take notes and keep on asking questions. Science never sleeps, and you shouldn’t sleep on that research, either!

Inez Ponce de leon is straddles both worlds of the bench and social sciences while working as a science and risk communication specialist. She loves to write on a wide variety of topics, whether it’s dancing, culture, Healthy Trim, novels, writing, movies, or genetics.

BestScienceFictionStories.com is excited to announce the addition of a new full-time blogger: Konstantine! Kostas (as he is known around here) is joining us from his home in Athens, Greece. He is no stranger to blogging or science fiction, just check out his cool web site, ShapeScapes, to find several good stories and reviews – including his recent review of the comic book The Metabarons.

Kostas has already submitted several guest posts here at BestScienceFictionStories.com and they have been a blast to read! So if you are interested in a new point of view, a great sense of humor and some really great reviews of science fiction stories then join with me in wishing him a warm welcome and a long reviewing life.

Welcome aboard Kostas!

Time travel stories have almost run their course: whether you’re reading The Time Traveler’s Wife or a classic by Jules Verne, it seems that man’s obsession with time travel has gotten tiring, if not overused. However, once in a while, there comes a story that makes you actually think: what if time travel was truly possible? What would happen? Where would you go?

In Tim Maly’s short Time, Again, we find ourselves looking at the world through the eyes of a man desperately in love, but confused in a world increasingly plagued by war. He is nameless, perhaps adding more to his believability. He loves a woman who travels through time, who loves the technology and is well versed in it.

Like The Time Traveler’s Wife, his likewise nameless wife comes back several times, and at different ages. She is young, full of life and brilliance; she is almost a child, but with wisdom beyond her years; she is his age, and his ardent lover. They make love, they kiss, they speak to each other as equals, she comforts him as she leaves.

However, unlike The Time Traveler’s Wife, Tim Maly’s story is short, succinct, and packed with emotion without going overboard. The story is not so much about the technology of time travel itself, but its impact. It is here where Maly works his magic with his prose: as the husband grieves and nurses his fears about the war, he struggles to remember the many times his wife returned, in different ways.

The past, present, and future tense all merge and interact, like a swarm of bees that is as incongruous from the outside looking in – but that forms a pattern that the reader/observer can easily follow. Maly’s prose is easy, and his imagery is vivid. He shows more, tells less, from the broken egg on the floor that rebuilds itself – a testament to a broken time machine and changed patterns of time – to his lead character’s eyes lingering over his woman’s body, even as she tries to preoccupy him with her knowledge of time travel.

The lead character is developed strongly, with an even pace. He comes off as a typical macho man who wants to control and understand everything, and yet who hides his broken heart. And yes, she does break his heart, in this story without end that travels eternally through time.

Maly’s story is surprisingly easy to follow, even with its jumps through tenses. His prose is his strongest point, as he shows how a brief tear in time changes lives completely.

You can read the whole story here http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TimeAgai.shtml

Inez Ponce de Leon has a background in molecular biology and science communication. She loves to write on a wide variety of topics, even Procera AVH.

Currently on our website, there are over twenty people (professionals and fans) publishing articles, reviews, and translations. The website serves as a kind of a hub, centralizing in syndication selected content from their personal websites and blogs, and we are also actively publishing original articles, reviews, interviews, short stories, etc. So far, we have published 6 PDF freely available fanzine issues, which are heavily focused on speculative fiction and poetry plus a smaller portion of the usual type of content we use for the main website. Every one is volunteering for the love of their scope of interest. Two years ago, I named the whole thing “A Gathering of Troubadours” (Sborishte na trubaduri), so that’s our official name

Anyway, please support Petar and our international SciFi community by taking a look at Trubadurs.com. If you don’t read Bulgarian you can translate it on the fly by using Google Chrome to visit the site. I think you’ll be well rewarded for your efforts.

Enjoy!

Something about science fiction seems to lend itself to narratives on an epic scale. You will be hard pressed to find a science fiction plot that spans less than a trilogy — and even when an author manages to contain the entire unwieldy mass of their story in one book, that book is typically so long that it might as well be three or more.

Given that science fiction often strives to be immersive, and that story arcs often involve considerable exposition, catching the readers up to speed, so to speak, it actually isn’t so surprising that science fiction series are sometimes made up over ten books. (Fantasy series are even guiltier of this, to be sure.)

But writers of science fiction short stories have a much smaller canvas to work with. Their worlds aren’t any smaller, and their ideas aren’t any less grand, but they are highly constrained by the space (pun intended) they have to craft an engaging story — how am I supposed to explain how the exhaustion of Earth’s resources and pollution of the atmosphere by nuclear radiation forced the population of earth to colonize Mars, where they find alien life-forms that threaten the continued survival of the human race in under 6,000 words?

A Microscopic Eye

Science fiction short stories aren’t about compressing an entire plot line down into a tiny space. If you try to cram a science fiction series into a short story, it will read more like a messy, expository plot summary than a compelling story.

The key is to turn a microscopic eye on one aspect of your imagined world and write a scene that revolves around it. Instead of walking the reader through the migration of the human race from Earth to Mars, you could write your story from the perspective of a detective, investigating what appears to be a gruesome murder in one of the Martian mining colonies.

It might even help to give your story a time limit, say three days, so that everything that happens in the story happens within three days. The closer you can “zoom in,” so to speak, on the fictional world you have created, the better.

Leak important back-story information through description or inference, and try to stay away from straight exposition. If you spend too much time explaining the where’s, how’s, and why’s of your world, you won’t have time to tell an engaging story, so focus only on the most important details and strip everything else away. Give your readers credit enough to figure out that something catastrophic happened on Earth that forced the population to move.

A great technique to writing sci-fi shorts is to blend genres. As I suggested above, you could write a story about a private detective on Mars, or a romance between a human and an alien — take plot devices from other genres and put them in a science fiction context.

Always remember that you are working in a short space, so get to the story right away, and get as specific and microscopic as possible.

If an author manages to contain the story within one book

Byline:

Jane Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. She writes about criminal background check for Backgroundcheck.org. Questions and comments can be sent to: janesmth161 @ gmail.com

One of the abiding joys of reading science fiction is being transported to another world, to the future, an alien planet, an alternate dimension, wherever the mind of the author takes us. Science fiction imagines new places and times that fascinate us and provide the setting for the drama that unfolds over the course of the narrative, making the experience seem real and vivid.

Often the level of detail we can find in science fiction is astounding, especially when authors are describing new landscapes, technology, life-forms and so on. It can be extremely intimidating, in fact, to writers who are only just beginning to try their hand at science fiction. The worlds envisioned by science fiction novelists seem so real — it’s hard to feel prepared in the face of such expertly rendered fiction.

As an occasional (amateur) writer of science fiction, I can attest to this feeling of inadequacy. And I can also confess to the mistake that almost all inexperienced science fiction writers make when trying to shoot for a level of realism in their stories: over-compensation.

What I mean is that, while trying to build a fictional, alien world that seems believable and real to readers, amateur authors (like myself) tend to over-explain the world, and even worse, try to make the whole thing credible by using “scientific” and technical language and concepts.

Over-exposition

Have you ever had an exceptionally bizarre and vivid dream and tried to describe it to a friend? Most of the time people don’t feel that they described the dream well enough, but if told entertainingly, friends are still absorbed in the story. The moral here is that it doesn’t take microscopic attention to detail to create a believable world. Even fiction that is rooted in reality doesn’t try to be so fanatically true-to-life.

What you should strive for in science fiction is to be convincing enough. It doesn’t take an extraordinary amount of detail to create a world that is believable — just enough to intrigue the reader and provide an environment and setting for the action of the story. Ultimately, it is the narrative that keeps readers going, not the realism of the fictional world.

In fact, the details that are closest to our real world experience will be the ones that are most memorable. We don’t actually have any way to fully describe alien worlds or structures that bear no resemblance to ours, because they are completely unfamiliar. Shoot for descriptions that compare the world to our world, but in a new, exciting way, and focus your efforts on the story.

Jargon

I will admit that science fiction writers are nerds. However, even if you are nerd, you should never resort to technical language or concepts to communicate with your readers. If you do, you actually alienate those who have no idea what you’re talking about, and simultaneously raise the suspicions of those who know more than you. Neither is good.

Again, stick with the familiar, but introduce new ideas. In the end, very few people care about the mechanics of a distant planet’s gravity. Suffice it to say that the gravity is 100 times that of Earth, and flings everyone to the left. Why? Because it’s science fiction, that’s why.

Author Bio:

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online colleges, online degrees etc. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

“Romano, The Great Magician”, a 2012 flash fiction by Martin Dugas, is about a magician who attempts to time travel right before the eyes of his spectators.

Non-spoiler summary

Romano is a brilliant scientist during the day. But every evening, he becomes an unparalleled entertainer who pushes the limits of both science and his own imagination to perform the most clever tricks no other magician has ever done before.

For the highlight of his performance, he attempts to time travel right before the eyes of his incredulous spectators. A risky trick for which one small mistake could be fatal.

If he succeeds, he will proudly confirm his unmatched status as the world’s greatest magician… and render his audience completely befuddled!

Where to find the story

This flash fiction (991 words) is available in Kindle format here.

Author bio & blog

Martin Dugas is a civil engineer who lives in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Fluent in both english and french, he continues to write short stories in both languages. He blogs at http://martindugas.wordpress.com. He admits he is a science fiction junkie. You can also read some science fiction short stories he has reviewed right here at BestScienceFictionStories.com.

I love reading – and I love looking beyond how words are arranged, and how a plot is ordered. A story is so much more than its characters and its tale. There are symbols in it. There is a history behind it. There are people who will love it and people who will hate it.

I also like reading reviews because they give me a chance to know what I should sink my teeth into, and which stories I should avoid before I end up spitting it out. There are reviews that were spot on. There are reviews that were so off base that I wanted to hunt down both the author AND the reviewer.

In my years as both writer and reviewer, however, I’ve found that there are things that you should avoid when writing reviewers. Here are my top five peeves that might help you write a better short story review.

1. Don’t tell me the story

I’ve read a lot of reviews that tell me the story from beginning to nearly-the-end. No, scratch that: I’ve actually read a review that had actual spoilers in it.

This might seem like common sense, but a lot of reviewers fall into this trap. A review sometimes consists of 5 paragraphs: 3 summarize the story, 1 tells me why the story is bad, 1 tells me why the story is good.

Limit your summary to less than a third of the review. Remember, you are telling me WHY I should or should not read the short story. You’re not making Cliffs Notes for the short story.

2. Don’t load me with jargon

I know what post-modernist means. I know what catharsis, catatonic, claustrophobic, chthonic, and congregational mean. I can stomach a lot of jargon.

But in a review? Overload your review with jargon and you just sound like you’re showing off all the vocabulary words you know.

Keep your review simple. I don’t need to know that Princess Calissima of the Planet Corkscrew is a Marxist antagonist of her quasi-patriarchal society. You can always say that she represents everything that her society is not – and then let me find out why when I read the story for myself.

3. Keep it short – and meaty

Have you ever read reviews that are longer than the short stories they write about? Yes, I’m sure the short story is fraught with enough meaning to cover an entire novel. But you don’t have to explore all the layers of meaning in it. Save that exploration for a scholarly article.

In the meantime, keep your review short. Stick to the basic ideas, and stay away from paragraphs that are over 3 sentences long. Remember, if you’re writing online, you can easily turn people away from dense text. You want people to read your review, not grimace at it.

That being said, short shouldn’t mean thin. This takes a lot of practice. You need to be succinct, and say a lot in only a few words.

4. Tell me WHY, Don’t Just Tell Me What to Do

I once had the pleasure (sarcastic) of reading a review that said this every other sentence, “OH MY GOSH YOU HAVE TO READ THIS STORY!!!”

I don’t want to hear your squealing. But you’ll need to tell me why I should read the work. Are the characters multi-dimensional in a short span of 1000 words or less? Is the lead character someone I can relate to? Is the plot so twisted and strange that I’ll never look at my life the same way again?

On the other hand, don’t condemn the story just because you didn’t like it. Tell me why I shouldn’t read it. Are the characters cardboard cutouts? Is the prose so purple you just see Barney the dinosaur swimming before your eyes? Is this story so mundane even you can write it in your sleep because the plot’s thinner than your skin?

Tell me why I need to do what you want me to do! In other words, show, don’t just tell.

5. Recommend, Don’t Order

I’ve read reviews that look like they were spouted out by angry reviewers who were short of selling me the story. And there’s nothing that irritates me more than people who are forcing me to buy something.

Persuade readers why they should read. Don’t tell me that I’ll be missing half my life if I don’t read this story now. Tell me gently – and tell me why I should read.

Ready to write your review? You’ll probably get more tips in your head as you write more and more. Just keep in mind that your audience wants to listen to your views, but it can only take so much. Be gentle, be precise, and be insightful, and we’ll love you. Really.

Inez Ponce de Leon has a background in molecular biology and science communication. She loves to write on a wide variety of topics, even supplements like healthy trim.

A little over a year ago I reviewed a flash fiction story called “Chameleon” by Colin Harvey. It was a great story and many people mentioned to me how much they liked it.

Well, last week one of my readers, Sam Lemberg, wrote in to let me know that he had created a video based on the short story:

I discovered the short story “Chameleon” by Colin Harvey on your website a few months ago and turned it into a short film (I obtained story rights from his widow).

I watched the video and was blown away! It is very well done and stays true to the story. If you’ve got 6 minutes it is well worth checking out. And if you have a couple more minutes be sure to check out my original review of “Chameleon” – or just read it online for free.

Let us know what you think, and don’t forget to enjoy yourself!

I love me a good science fiction story. After all, I worked in a science lab for a decade. My own novelist brain tells me that every corner of that lab has a story to tell. I’ve worked with DNA, organic chemicals, and industrial poisons. No, it wasn’t fun, but it sure beat just reading books!

That’s why I get really critical of science fiction writers who don’t know their science. No, there is no sound in space, so don’t tell me that the ship rocketed through galaxies with a whooshing sound. No, a forensic molecular biology profile doesn’t tell you who killed the victim; it exonerates suspects and tells you who didn’t. A really good science fiction story is up on the science and becomes real, so I don’t have to suspend a lot of my disbelief.

So what are the common traps that science fiction writers often fall into?

1. Too Little Science

I know of some short story writers who make it a point to interview scientists before they even attempt to write a story. Some ideas might not be too farfetched – flying cars, fast laboratory tests, invisible airplanes – but some ideas just might be too out there, even overused. Monsters that are products of mutation, anyone?

But wait! You might argue. Science fiction is that: fictionalized science!

Yes, but you don’t have to make it totally impossible. Sometimes, injecting some science into your work can make it even more realistic – and draw your audience closer to you, so that they really ask, “What if?” instead of “So what?” or worse, “What the -”

2. Too Much Science

There’s a flipside to all these science fiction writers who don’t do their research. There are science fiction writers who bombard us with too much science, they’re starting to sound like they’re writing a scholarly article (or reading from a textbook).

Writing a science fiction story isn’t about giving us scientific research. It’s about showing very subtly how science permeates into all life without having to tell us every step of the way. Science shouldn’t be boring; it’s so pervasive that you can actually discover new things about life just by realizing how so many things we do are the products of science.

3. Having Way too Many, Way too Boring Stereotypes

I’m a scientist. I write novels and I belly dance. I know scientists who act, dance, drive fast cars, drink until their livers run out, and act like complete idiots when they step out of the lab. Not all scientists wear glasses, shun society, hang out with their hamsters, and sit quietly in the corner. You can use stereotypes only so far before they weigh your story down.

So go ahead, use a stereotype if you think that people can appreciate them. But don’t overuse them. The best stories are those that make us see the world in a whole new light. And yes, you have my permission to write about a belly dancing scientist.

4. A Preponderance of Telling

This is a trap that nearly all writers fall into. We’re always told to show, not tell. It’s harder than you think.

Look at these two sentences:

The rain poured heavily outside.

She entered the bar, dripping wet and creating puddles of rain on the floor.

See, it’s not just about using fewer words. You don’t even have to tell your readers that the rain poured heavily. Someone just came in from the pouring rain.

Show me, don’t tell me. You can create a whole new world that way: by awakening my imagination and giving me the power to think. The minute you tell me exactly what to think and see, I could mistake you for a dictator, not a writer.

5. Dialogue that Sounds Like the Wrong End of a Conversation

Science fiction stories should also sound as real to me as though they could REALLY happen – and dialogue can help that.

I’ve read science fiction short stories that have characters engaging in endless dialogue – most of it being stilted, or completely pointless. I’ve also read short stories that have very little dialogue, but the dialogue is essential, terse, and realistic.

Read your dialogues out to yourself. Think: is this something that you would say? Now, think deeper: is this something that your character would say? Now, think even deeper: is this something that your character would say given their current situation?

Be honest with yourself when evaluating your dialogue. Better yet, have friends read your short story and ask them to look specifically at dialogues. If someone else’s eyes are scrutinizing your work, they’ll likely see things that you would otherwise miss, dialogue being just one of them.

These are just a few traps that science fiction writers can fall into. Recognize what these traps are and allow them to help you edit your work. If you’re a reviewer, see how often you can find these traps. You’ll discover that really good stories might fall very slightly into one of these traps, but tell a story so well, you’ll find yourself going, “Wow. That could really happen!”

Inez Ponce de Leon has a background in molecular biology and science communication. She loves to write on a wide variety of topics, even brain health supplements.