Writing Science Fiction

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I know a lot of us here are into reading sci-fi, but how many of us are into writing it? I'm big into writing sci-fi, myself- it's my favorite genre to work in. My favorite sub-genres are cyberpunk, space opera, military sci-fi and biopunk; and I have at least one writing project going in each of those sub-genres.

So, I guess if you're into writing sci-fi and/or want to share some of your own sci-fi work with others who'll appreciate it, feel free to contribute to this topic. I probably will be, most likely. Maybe turn this into the sci-fi version of the writing showcase? Also, if you want to share your work, I'd suggest noting what sub-genre(s) it falls under, just to kind of keep things cataloged or something.

I don't but it's something I aspire to do. I really like interesting Sci-Fi a lot and would like to try writing it. I'm a big fan of Philip K. Dick.

Unfortunately, I'm really busy with college and trying to start over with a new career. Someday if I have a nice quiet writing space I'd like to try it.

I would love to be able to write sci fi. I've come up with extravagant and detailed plots for sci fi novels but it has never really come together.

I have to stick to poetry and realistic fiction for the time being because those are the only things I can finish writing.

I have a whole series very roughly sketched out and a few very rough drafts. Trouble is, the number of other things that have claims on my time. I finally just decided to keep at it, grab the notebook every time I head somewhere where I'll have a few extra minutes, and write.

Yes, I would love to write a cyberpunk novel. But you really need to invest a lot of effort there, a cyberpunk novel is not a easy thing to write, it's a hard process, the characters are living in a very harsh world. In fact the environment is as important as the characters.

A request to you aspiring writers: Pretty much every science-fiction are too technology focused.

Example:

I would love to see more sci-fi where they treat the <tech device> normal as if you used it every day like a subway train or a mobile phone. IMO, its getting old.

I have been writing a sci fi/fantasy saga for about 3 years. I love writing mainly and am doing a sci fi because I like those stories more than any other. I am focusing a lot on my characters and the state of humanity. The technology is in the story but I do not go into description about how it all works etc. I prefer to make the reader care about my characters than a piece of technology.

As much as I love sci-fi I hate writing it. It's too boring to me mostly because I'm more of a fantasy person. So when I work on the sci-fi novel I'm writing, it gets boring and I switch to something else.
My solution to this problem was to turn it into a sci-fi fantasy. So I have a sci-fi which is just not going anywhere, and then I have a dieselpunk fantasy, and a sci-fi fantasy.
I suppose it's boring because once I set up the world and the technology, I feel restricted because there's no mysticism allowed. Like, a machine is a machine. But a machine containing, like, a deity or something is more interesting to me. Kind of like the TARDIS from Doctor Who. The TARDIS is a time machine but it's alive with a spirit. If it was just a machine, I'd be like... yeah ok cool it's a time machine how nice.
I agree with Ichinin that many sci-fi stories revolve around technology. In the sci-fi novel I'm writing that I get bored of, one of the big things is prosthetics body parts. And like, there's only so much I could do with that. So they have a fake arm. Cool.
Yeah sci-fi has almost no limits but fantasy has even more no limits because it's not restricted by science. If that makes sense.
Although it is certainly interesting to blend science with fantasy. And in the end you could always explain how something is as if it were something of science.

I'm working on a post-cyberpunk novel, myself. All the high-tech and low-life, but more optimism and social connectivity. My novel even features a still-pristine Yosemite National Park.

I'm doing that with my post-cyberpunk novel, where the tech is purely secondary to the characters, and it's treated as normal, everyday stuff. None of the tech is emphasized or expanded on unless it's needed, and even then, it's just touched on in layman's terms, from the protagonist/narrator's point of view.

To quote Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

If you feel restricted by science, you're not thinking creatively enough. I BS a lot of stuff in my sci-fi; throw in a lot of pseudo-science or theoretical evolutions of current tech. Cyberpunk's a great example of this. I have one character in my post-cyberpunk novel who has extra mental "capacity" wired directly into her brain. She's also being kept alive by a highly-advanced set of heart and lungs, and nano-machines in her bloodstream and cells. By all rights, and today's tech, she should have died shortly after birth, but thanks to that tech, she's alive and healthy- and probably even more hardy than the average person, now, too.

In a cyberpunk movie script I'm working on, the main character also has a large number of physical augmentations that make them super-human and an excellent covert operative. Stuff like a carbon-fiber reinforced skeletal structure, sinew micro-servo-cabled musculature, intrabroncheal filters, sub-dermal picks, wide-spectrum aural amplification units, wide-spectrum occular implants, etc.

I'm still attempting to write it. It's kind of turning into a fantasy novel, though.

I mostly read and write horror, but I have a special appreciation for horror/scifi crossovers. Lovecraft had written some such stuff of that variety, like At The Mountains Of Madness, and The Shadow Out Of Time, while John W. Campbell famously had written Who Goes There, which was the basis of The Thing. While I'm more familiar with horror/scifi cross overs in cinema, I'd be interested if anyone could suggest more recent works of fiction of this variety. Anyhow, if I ever write any scifi, it would very probably be crossed with a strong horror element.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Been working on a space opera novel for quite a while.

I started mine as fantasy, and what with one thing and another, I realized that time travel, inter-dimensional portals, and complex explanations of how "magic" is attracted to water versus rock suggested I was slipping across genres. The hardest bit, either way, is the anthropological development of societies in an alternate world, and trying not to be cliche while recognizing you can never be 100% original.

So, I've decided on making the military sci-fi story I've been working on lately a bit different from all the others out there, in terms of tech: There's no artificial gravity. It's all done locally with magnetism. Means that, without the proper gear, you're just floating around on a spaceship, and the only places in space with artificial gravity are centrifugal space stations. Asteroid colonies have micro-gravity, but that's it. That, and jump drives are only installed aboard military and scientific spacecraft. Civilian and private spacecraft have to use a network of jumpgates. Those cover inter-system travel, but intra-system travel is done via sub-light spaceships; primarily commercial ones. There are very few spaceships privately owned by civilians. Oh yeah- and there are no aliens. Only terraformed worlds populated by humans and the plants and animals they brought with them from Earth.