Writing science fiction

Vincent T Grant, former astronaut, shares some secrets about writing science fiction novels:

The other thing is you have to write two stories. But really they’re the same story, but you have to be maybe a kid and a grandma at the same time. So you do kid for two pages. Then you do grandma for two pages. Then the kid again. Now every time you do the kid you use italics. These two guys don’t hear each other until the end of the story when suddenly it’s hello the kid is a robot. You end up with a book where the writing changes every couple of pages. That’s called new wave. Get some practice and you can do three or four switcheroos in the same book.

The cool thing is that there doesn’t have to be a story. Just throw a whole bunch of vague stuff together. If you want you can throw in stuff about ‘little boys’ at random and be William Burroughs.

Tom Ellard: How to write Science Fiction