How the Sci-fi novel ‘The Pornography Wars’ came about.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. I decided it would not be a film but a rather tacky soap opera.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. They had to be very sexual because they enjoyed these porno soaps.
  6. 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.
  7. They had to be creative.
  8. Their sexuality had to be extreme.
  9. I wanted the drama in the humans so I introduced the element of a human who was breaking free of the alien psych control.
  10. I wanted drama in the aliens so created a group who wanted to clean up the tridee networks and remove the decadent sexual content.
  11. I now had a setting, characters and drama to knit together into a story.
  12. 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.

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