British writer Paul McAuley wrote an interesting article about the depiction of science in science fiction.

He makes the point that it’s in the nature of fiction to tend towards depicting sudden revelations rather than gradual processes:

You know the kind of thing: lone geniuses who go against the grain of current thinking; oddballs who stumble upon a new paradigm, like a metal-detecting hobbyist lucking out on a hoard of Roman gold; science advanced by epiphanies that explode with the frequency of flashguns at a film premiere (and in films, often require really fast typing to defuse some last-minute knucklebiting threat involving overflux in the intertubes that would otherwise create deadly feedback in everyone’s hypothalami).

But most science is mostly a cooperative, slow, patient accretive process… And an awful lot of science isn’t about the sudden apprehension of a universal truth, but the gainsaying of alternate explanations for an observed phenomenon or fact…

Of course, this kind of science isn’t much use in the construction of stories in which heroes slice through the Gordian knot of some world-threatening problem, or make some world-changing discovery. But it’s the kind of science that serious SF should at least acknowledge – just as any kind of serious fiction should acknowledge the complexity of the happening world, and the knotty and often ambiguous moral choices real people have to make.

Discover magazine recently published a list of examples of bad science from movies.  The entry onTransformers includes this:

A fundamental rule in the universe is that mass cannot be destroyed, so making something smaller doesn’t mean it will be lighter in weight! Any Transformer keeping its mass will therefore become very dense: A 100-foot-tall robot compacting down to a 10-foot car would plunge right through the road and into Earth’s crust.

That would be amusing to watch but would make endless sequels unlikely.

Some beginning writers who are only familiar with science fiction through the movies and TV shows don’t realise that written SF has much higher standards when it comes to scientific accuracy and consistency.

For example, the popular Battlestar Galactica show (the remake) has some interesting ideas about consciousness and downloading.  (Many of these ideas aren’t  new compared to books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Neuromancer).  But other aspects of its science are a confusing and inconsistent mess.  Take the use of nuclear weapons.  Sometimes ships can use nuclear weapons and instantly blow up anything they want.  At other times, it can take ages for a fleet of ships to even damage other ships.

One of the show’s main characters is a TV Scientist^TM – not a real scientist.  He’s conveniently an expert in whatever scientific field is biology, computer programming, networks, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics is required for the purposes of the plot.  It takes a lifetime to specialise in any of these fields.  If you write a SF short story or novel, your depiction of scientists had better be more accurate than this.

Some famous SF novels that include interesting depictions of scientists at work include Timescapeand Spin.

Even in written SF your science doesn’t have to be 100% accurate (it’s debatable whether things like time travel and hyperspace travel are scientifically possible), but you should at the very least avoid obvious errors of terminology.

One of the most famous bad science clunkers comes from Star Wars where Han Solo talks about making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.  A parsec is a measure of distance, not time.

Other terms that I’ve seen misused a lot recently are uploading and downloading.  Some people simply substitute download for copy, but that’s not right.

For example:

• I downloaded the data onto the Internet.
• I uploaded the data onto the Internet.

WikiAnswers has a nice summary of the difference:

It’s all a matter of perspective. If you are loading something to the computer in front of you from another computer it’s called “downloading” If you’re loading something FROM the computer in front of you to another computer, it’s generally called “uploading”.

Another perspective is the SIZE and function of the computer. If you’re loading something from a server or large computer to your computer, it’s downloading. If you’re loading something TO a server or larger computer it’s called uploading.

These days it’s much easier to do research on the Internet.  A good overall guide for helping to make your science more accurate is The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe by George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier.

When you’ve just written something it’s hard to get a distance from it.  Typos are easy to miss.

The best way to distance yourself from your work is to put it aside for a while.  But if you have a deadline then sometimes this isn’t an option.

One way to get a fresh perspective if you don’t have time is to use a text to speech program.  If you listen to your story, you’ll notice things you might not have picked up on if you just reread it.

Text to speech programs have improved in recent years and some of them sound reasonably natural. (They’ll still struggle with foreign words and names).

The ATT web site can only convert a small amount of text, so it’s not much good for reading entire stories.  But it gives you an example of the capability of modern text to speech.

ATT Research Labs (It has a 300 character limit)
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Natural Reader
http://www.naturalreaders.com/

Natural Reader have both free and professional versions for Windows and Mac.  The free version only includes one voice and it sounds pretty mechanical.

TextAloud
http://www.nextup.com/

Windows software with a variety of options and voices.

Even if your main interest is in writing novels and/or short stories, you should still consider writing some non-fiction pieces.

Why?

If you’re a beginning writer, getting a non-fiction piece professionally published is usually a lot easier than getting paid for fiction.  Essays and articles are also a great way to draw attention to your novel.  Let’s say you’ve just had a vampire novel published.  If you had an article published about the differences between vampires from different cultures, you could include in your bio information that you’d written a vampire novel.

So how do you work out what to write about?

One way to start is to work out what your favorite magazines and web sites are.  What kind of articles could you write for them?

You can also work out what broad areas you’re interested in.  For example I’m interested in: science fiction, books, movies, travel, photography and computer games.

That gives you a broad area to work in, but you need to give your article a specific focus or slant.  What I Think About Movies isn’t the kind of article you’re going to sell (unless you’re already famous).  It needs to be more specific.  Why China’s Reclaiming of Hong Kong Led to a Decline in the Hong Kong Film Industry.

This is particulary true for travel writing.  Some editors will tell you that a destination is not an idea.  Travel magazines have already published articles on just about any place you could care to think of.  Instead of My Trip to Paris, you could try selling The Ten Best Museums to Visit in Paris. Many editors are particularly partial to Top Ten kind of articles.  (The Ten Hottest Clubs to Meet Vampires?)  Not everyone likes top ten articles though.  Clarkesworld’s non-fiction guidelines explicity state their dislike of “articles that purport to provide 10 rules for success/failure in a particular endeavor.”

Does your job give you any special qualifications that you could write about?  A friend of mine is a psychologist and counsels adolescents.  I used to work for the computer games industry.  We co-wrote an article providing an overview of some of the studies that had been conducted examining the effects on children of playing violent computer games.  We sold it to an Australian parenting magazine and got paid 50c a word.  That’s 10 times the rate I’ve been paid for fiction sales.

Maybe you can’t think of any areas that you feel qualified to write about.  What personal experiences have you had that others might be interested in?  I attended Clarion South (a science fiction writing workshop) earlier this year.  I sold an article about my experience as a student to The Internet Review of Science Fiction.

Even if you don’t think you’re an expert on a topic, the Internet makes doing research so much easier than what it was 15 or 20 years ago.

So what are some ways of generating ideas for articles?

Reading articles can give you ideas for your own articles.  You read an article about how vampires represent the lust women have for gay men and think that’s nonsense.  You write an article about how vampires really represent our fear of dentists.

What topics are popular right now? This can include the bleeding obvious (e.g. vampires).   The trick is to give a different perspective or compare it with something else.  How are Asian vampires different from Western vampires? (Chinese vampires like to hop!)

Another easy way is repackaging a topic for another market.  I read an interview with an Australian potter in an Australian local newspaper. I don’t know anything about pottery, but it mentioned that the potter’s tea bowls had been graded by Japanese tea masters. I interviewed him by email and sold anarticle to a Japanese magazine that was interested in what foreigners thought of Japanese culture.

You can also write about different works (movies, books, etc) that have a similar broad theme.  I sold an article to Salon.com a few years ago that looked at books that had been linked to controversial murder cases. I got the idea when I read a book about the Aum Supreme Truth cult in Japan and how they had been influenced by ideas from Asimov’s Foundation series.

Another way is to look at upcoming events.  The World Expo will be in Shanghai next year so people are going to interested in articles about Shanghai.  Upcoming anniversaries are another source of ideas.  It was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall recently and there a lot of articles about the Berlin Wall in the media.  It would be a good chance to try and interest editors in your exclusive scoop of how vampires secretly brought about the fall of Communism.

Writing Reviews

Most of the more prestigious publications already have their own reviewers.  But writing reviews for smaller web sites can be a good way to get your first publication.  Maybe you won’t get paid, but sometimes you’ll be able to get some free books out of the deal.  Just remember that writing a summary of the plot doesn’t equate to writing an interesting review.

Science Fiction Markets

A number of online sf magazines  are interested in non-fiction submissions.

Clarkesworld

Fantasy Magazine

Strange Horizons

Non-Paying SF Markets

Specusphere

Revolution SF

SF Crows Nest

A writer that got themselves banned by Fantasy Magazine.

http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/281662.html

A useful roundup of the best online genre magazines.

http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2009/10/online-genre-magazines.html