Three neglected science fiction books by New Zealand writers:
The Red Dust by Bee Baldwin (1965) is one of the first NZ post-apocalyptic novels. A deadly red dust released by Antarctic drilling wipes out much of the world. A group of immunes must survive roaming gangs and a mastermind who wants to rule New Zealand. It’s a chilling, well-structured story, with great use of NZ settings (this adult novel was inexplicably in my primary school library where I read it at age 10 and understood about 10%).

The Unquiet by Carolyn McCurdie is a strikingly original intermediate novel and a suspenseful read. It has an apocalyptic opening when the planet Pluto and parts of the Earth’s surface vanish. A small town girl has a gift for sensing unrest in the fabric of the universe and becomes the focus in a battle as the novel turns into a fantasy.

Where All Things End by David Hill describes a spectacular journey into a Black Hole. A mission to study the hole goes wrong and the crew race towards the Singularity- a point where all things become no-things. A ripping yarn underpinned by a convincing depiction of space travel and universal theories.

The movie that forever changed my attitude to the future. – Michio Kaku

Forbidden Planet is a classic sci-fi movie about an advanced society that has destroyed itself through technology.  It shares elements with The Tempest (Morbius is Prospero, the robot is Ariel) except the movie uses science instead of the supernatural – recalling Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.  The science is well grounded and the psychology even more so. I love this movie for the set design, the monster from the sub-conscious, the first ever all-electronic  score (by Bebe and Louis Barron) and the melodramatic script:

My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it! – Morbius

For fascinating reading: Imagining Technology, an essay about the influence of science-fiction on advances in technology, such as H.G. Wells and the atomic bomb:

H. G. Wells named the atomic bomb in The World Set Free in 1913… Leo Szilard, reading the book in 1932, still had it on his mind when he conceived the idea of a chain reaction the following year. –John Turney

The things that you do should be things that you love; and the things that you love should be things you do. – Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury has died. His stories are like mountains in my reading landscape; they kept me reading in my teens and inspire my writing today. I still treasure my Corgi paperback of  The Golden Apples of the Sun – the best 65c I ever spent (in 1970 that was an hour’s raspberry picking). Bradbury’s sci-fi-fantasy stories are scary, surprising, sentimental and moral: a couple face death together (The Last Night of the World); a dinosaur loves a lighthouse (The Fog Horn); an insect changes history (A Sound of Thunder); an astronaut pursues Jesus from planet to planet (The Man); the sun only shines once every 7 years (All Summer in a Day). He wrote widely: short stories (my favourite collection is The Illustrated Man) novels, film (a great script for Moby Dick) and a gripping TV series. Here’s a wonderful talk by Bradbury aged 88 about his love of books and reading; a warm and enlightening tribute by Margaret Atwood; and his last published work, in the New Yorker.

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.– Ray Bradbury

The classic little sci-fi film The Incredible Shrinking Man (1958) was a metaphor for the atomic angst of the 1950s but it’s themes have not dated – Fukishima has revived fears of radioactive poisoning. The film’s hero, Scott Carey, is exposed to a radioactive cloud and begins to shrink. Struggling to remain master of his home environment, miniature Scott battles his cat, a spider, and a leaking tap (always a threat to the male ego). Finally, he’s reduced to his essential self and gazes at the stars to ponder his place in the universe. His closing monologue is a fascinating blend of spirituality and scientific ideas about the smallest particles in the universe. Cosmologist Paul Davies writes that ‘the properties of the smallest entities in nature in fact determined the very structure of the life-friendly cosmos.’ He concludes his book, The Goldilocks Effect, by saying

The universe is about something.

Watch the ending of the movie here, or read this extract (script by Richard Matheson):

So close – the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet—like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too.

Sum, Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman, is a hugely entertaining, often thought-provoking book. Each very short story describes a quirky version of life after death. There is an afterlife populated only by people you remember; one where you are split into different ages; another where God is a married couple. Listen to Stephen Fry reading one about a highly ordered afterlife. The stories are not so much about theology or God (although He, She, and They do appear as somewhat fallible characters) as about treasuring the life we have now – plus a bit of humour and sci-fi just for fun. Here’s a video interview with Eagleman (a neuroscientist) who describes himself as a ‘Possibilian’– one who explores new ideas. (More novels about the afterlife).

In his wonderful book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (p.76), novelist Orson Scott Card says all stories contain 4 basic aspects: Milieu, Idea, Character and Event (MICE!). Here are some sci-fi examples (YA):

• Milieu: about a world or a society. Eg. Running Out of Time by Margaret Haddix about time travel to a past society.
• Idea: begins with a mystery to answer. Eg. Protus Rising by Ken Catran, murder mystery in space.
• Character: about character transformation. Eg.The House of Scorpion by Nancy Farmer about a clone who develops values.
• Event: when something goes wrong in the world. Eg. Box by Penelope Todd about an epidemic that strikes New Zealand.

Which aspect of the story matters most to you? That is the aspect that will give you the story’s structure. – Orson Scott Card

I’m writing a sci-fi novel and falling into two traps: Infodump and Unobtainium. Infodump is a when a character gives a mini lecture — telling instead of showing — usually in reply to “Tell me, Professor, how does your invention work?” Infodump can be reduced by editing out techno-babble; and by using characters to give brief explanations only when plot demands it.

Unobtainium is a plot device such as an alien substance or a future technology. Most sci-fi has them but too often they’re used to magic away a plot problem, as in ‘Lucky I brought my sonic screwdriver to do this impossible task.’ (see also ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’– Arthur C Clarke). Possible solutions: make your ‘Unobtainium’ central to the plot (give it a cool back-story); or reduce it to a playful veneer of science. The characters in TV’s Fringe play nimbly with real science:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched…

So begins The War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells (1898) perhaps the most influential of all sci-fi stories. Wells gave the world its extraterrestrial consciousness and opened dramatic wells that produced countless alien books and movies (and inspires my writing today) . On this day in 1938, Orson Welles news-style broadcast of TWOTW  on American radio had many thinking it was an invasion, if not by the Martians then the Germans. (Listen to a clip from this clever radio report). The style was much copied: in Christchurch in the late 1940s, a radio station broadcast that a UFO had landed in Hagley Park, causing people to flock to the park. H.G.Wells once met Orson Wells and recorded this interview. And I like the TWOTW musical with Richard Burton’s cool narration.

Picture by Alvim Corréa, TWOTW 1906 ed.

As a teenager I loved sci-fi. The stories were packed with ideas and had cool surprise endings: like Arthur C Clarke’s All the Time in the World, about a man who freezes time a split second before a nuclear blast; and  A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury in which an insect changes history (no, not a honey bee). I still treasure my copy of his Golden Apples of the Sun; it cost 65c new in 1970, about an hour’s raspberry picking back then.

And A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was ahead of its time with wormholes and angels. (New writers take note that it was rejected 26 times because it so so different in 1960). Who could resist an ending where a giant disembodied alien brain is defeated by love? L’Engle tackled some grand themes in this quintet of novels. She said,

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. Madeleine L’Engle