The Galactic Sentinel
Stardate 2 22 2019
Where do science fiction stories come from?
Phil Nolte
A question authors get asked all the time is: "Where do
you get your ideas?" The answer in my case is: "From pretty much
everywhere." It could be a news item, it could be something I remembered
from junior high, something I read by another author, or something that came up
in a conversation. It shouldn't come as a shock, but authors borrow from one
another all the time. Where do you think we get "blasters," and
"pulse weapons," and "warp drives," and a host of other
science fiction staples? Most of these, in some form or another, have been
around since the origins of the genre. One thing that helps me with ideas, I
think, is the fact that I've read a ton
of science fiction books and short stories. Oh, and quite a lot about real
science too.
Just because the above staples are well-worn clichés doesn't
mean an author shouldn't use them. There's a sort of "short hand"
involved when using these stock objects - shields, propulsion systems, etc.,
because they're pretty much universally understood by the science fiction audience.
No need to waste time explaining this stuff - on with the story! Inventing new
stuff is always fun though, and this sort thing often comes to the author
unbidden.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something
blue... I incorporated almost all of these suggestions while creating a short
story entitled "Endurance Racer" in 1988. (You can find it in my
short story collection "Cannibals Shrink Elvis's Head" on Amazon). In
this story there was this big race, a kind of steeplechase really, that was
contested on a course mapped out in our solar system's asteroid belt. Here's
what was new: the contestants were piloting pedal powered spacecraft! Far out
eh?
Here's what hatched the story. I had been following the development
of pedal-powered airplanes since engineer Dr. Paul McCready's Gossamer Condor won something called the
first Kremer Prize (google it) by successfully negotiating a prescribed course
that involved clearing a barrier at least ten feet high, flying a figure eight
course around markers placed a half mile apart, and then clearing the same ten
foot barrier at the end. This proved to be a significant challenge. The prize
was established in 1959, and McCready's team didn't succeed in claiming it
until 1977.
It gets better. Two years later, McCready's team won a
second Kremer prize by flying the Gossamer
Albatross across the channel from
England to France! Impressive, to be sure, but that still wasn't the end of
the story. In 1988 MIT's Daedalus was
flown from the island of Crete to the island of Santorini, a distance of over
72 miles! This feat duplicated the flight described in the old Greek myth about
Daedalus and his son Icarus escaping from Crete using wings created by the old
engineer. Unfortunately, Icarus, the impulsive teenager, flew too close to the
sun, melting the wax that kept his wings together, and plunged into the sea to
his death.
After reading about this last accomplishment involving
human-powered airplanes, I remember thinking, "What's next, human-powered
spacecraft?" The story built from there. I used my love of automobile
racing to create the racecourse, sketch out some of the characters, and outline
some of the behaviors one would expect from racers.
I shamelessly borrowed an idea I remembered from a book I
read back in junior high called "Rocket Jockey" published in 1952 by
Lester Del Ray, one of the old masters. This was another story about a race in
space, but it involved a race from planet to planet in rocketships. Great fun!
What I remembered vividly from the story, was that the rocketeers each used a fuel
additive to give their exhaust plume a unique color. The Martians (human
colonists, not aliens) used red, earthers used blue, and so on. As a result, my
pedal-powered spacecraft all had different colored exhausts so the spectators
could tell who was who. Thank you, Mr. Del Ray, for a magnificent idea.
I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings, I'll have another blog
out soon. Meantime check out my "Junkyard Dogs" trilogy and my
"Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel" series on Amazon. "The
Callisto Catacombs," book three of the Guardians trilogy, will be out soon.
Don't hesitate to contact me. Feedback and discussion are
always welcome.
Phillip Nolte's website: http://www.phillipnolte.com/
