How the Sci-fi novel ‘The Pornography Wars’ came about.
A novel involves bringing together a number of ideas. Usually one idea starts the ball rolling. That then provokes a series of other ideas and presents challenges with all manner of problems that require solving.
Here’s a little taste of how this developed:
- I had the idea of writing a novel where the whole of human history was a film set run by aliens for their own entertainment.
- I decided it would not be a film but a rather tacky soap opera.
- I then decided that it had to be a pornographic soap opera. I liked the idea of human history being nothing more than a sleazy porno soap for aliens.
- I had to create my aliens. They had to be designed to be far more efficient biologically that humans. I used my biological background to design a perfect body.
- They had to be very sexual because they enjoyed these porno soaps.
- They had to be very technologically advance to be able to control humans and develop this enormous film set. Hence psych control, nanotechnology, instant space travel with jumptubes, droptubes and A/I.
- They had to be creative.
- Their sexuality had to be extreme.
- I wanted the drama in the humans so I introduced the element of a human who was breaking free of the alien psych control.
- I wanted drama in the aliens so created a group who wanted to clean up the tridee networks and remove the decadent sexual content.
- I now had a setting, characters and drama to knit together into a story.
- I had an ending.
As with all novels the characters take off and things change as they go along. It comes to life in unpredictable ways.