"Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work. ... the fun... lies in treating the whole thing as a game. ... the rules must be quite simple. They are; for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author's statements or implications which conflict with the facts as science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few such slips as he possibly can. ... Certain exceptions are made [e.g., to allow travel faster than the speed of light, but] fair play demands that all such matters be mentioned as early as possible in the story..."
Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, presuming that other people will actually end up reading this science fiction story I'm working on, but for the last few evenings I've been trying to do my homework on my hard-science subject matter, for the reasons he cites. It is fun. I've only written a few actual snippets of story written so far, but I have a page or two of solid plot worked out. I've been thinking about little else these days while on buses, trains, and toilets. Only occasionally is the little doubter in my brain chiming in. I'm wondering if maybe famous people are just people who are born without that little punk. Or maybe, in the grand tradition of American letters, they just kill him with alcohol. ;-)
No smilies in my story, I promise.
Update: Too weird. I quoted this Hal Clement guy, then in looking up more about him, found that he died only seven days ago.
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