In 1979/80 I secured a teaching exchange to the USA and ended up teaching in Norwalk in Los Angeles. Following an initial culture shock I had a fabulous year. My students were wonderful and I still think of them very fondly. It was a tough area, full of racism and gangs. But I digress already.
The people we exchanged with had a grown-up daughter. As we had exchanged houses and cars she had access to my library of books and discovered I had a whole row of Philip K Dick, one of my favourite Sci-Fi writers. Susan was a friend of Philip K. Dicks – or Phil, as she called him.
Around Christmas time she was returning to the USA and asked if I would like to go to meet him.
Would I? I would certainly have given a limb or two for the opportunity.
So it was that a young would-be Science Fiction writer (namely myself) found himself being escorted for an evening with the great man.
It all seemed surreal. I had so much to ask. I wanted advice. I wanted to ask him about his writing, where he got his ideas, how he set about it, how he became published.
When I found myself in his apartment in the presence of one of the greatest Sci-Fi writers of all time, I was too overawed to say much. Everything seemed blank.
We sat on sofas, drank beer and talked. The evening seemed a blur. All I can remember is him telling me that he had just been to the studio to see the rushes for a new film based on one of his books. It was called ‘The Claw’. He showed me a poster of this huge metal claw grasping a planet. It looked fantastic. He told me that seeing the rushes it was like looking inside his own head.
I have subsequently looked for the film and seen nothing that resembled the poster he showed me. Perhaps it was scrapped? Perhaps it later came out as Screamers – based on Second Variety? Or perhaps I imagined it? I was in such a state.
The only other thing I remember was that I asked him what he thought was the best thing he’d ever written. He laughed. He told me that he thought it was a scene of a gun duel between a gun shooter and a man with telekinetic powers. The gun shooter went to draw his gun and found himself holding his own pancreas.
At the end of the evening I thanked him and that was that.
I often look back and kick myself. If only I’d taken a book for him to sign, had a selfie that I could cherish, or relaxed enough to have a real conversation.
Never mind. I spent an evening with Philip K Dick. That’s enough.
What is quite apparent is that writing a book requires a team of people. Rarely does one person have a complete skill set to handle the task.
Writing a book entails:
Having the imagination to envisage the novel.
Having the ability to create a plot.
Having the writing ability to create interest in a reader.
Being able to invent characters.
Being perceptive to see flaws in the plot.
Having the knowledge of grammar, punctuation and spelling to be able to correct mistakes.
Possessing the ability to make the language flow and create pace.
Being able to describe the novel in such a way as to create interest without introducing spoilers.
To possess the artistic skills to design a cover.
To build up the social media connections and other media connections to market the book.
Creative people rarely have the objectivity or skills to redraft, edit or see the flaws in their writing. They require a methodical editor to point out necessary improvements and corrections.
A person skilled at writing may not be at all skilled at design or even able to create an enticing and succinct back cover blurb.
Building up social networks, writing press releases, doing book signings and developing contacts, takes time. Most writers would rather be writing and might well be hopeless at communicating in other ways.
A team can hone and present a book to optimise its potential.
Writing a good book and selling it requires a good team. That’s why writers form relationships with publishers and Literary Agents.
14 years of taking from the poor.
14 years of cutting public services
14 years of pay cuts
14 years of pot holes
14 years of running down education
14 years of running down the NHS
14 years of cutting police, courts and prisons
14 years of giving to the rich
Now the media is saying that Labour is making it up!
This is going to take decades to repair!!
The early Sci-fi writers described future worlds with sleek modernistic vehicles and spacecraft. They had descriptions of futuristic cities and travel between planets. In Sci-fi stories craft could journey faster than the speed of light, there were parallel worlds and different dimensions and universes. You could even travel through time.
Once the ideas have been invented human minds start working on them.
These days we live in the world that has been created by the ideas imagined in Sci-fi novels. The views of those early Sci-fi writers have been realised in the architecture and design of cars, in clothing and in materials used.
We have a a world revolving around computers, robots, satellites, mobile phones and rockets. We have been to the moon and are planning trips to the planets.
We have nuclear energy, supersonic planes and bullet trains.
Our physicists have discovered black holes, quasars and quantum. Polyverses are a real possibility and folds in space may enable faster than light travel.
We live in a world that people a hundred years ago would have considered impossible science fiction fantasy. If someone from 1900 was to come into our time they would be amazed. Our gadgetry would astound them.
It is quite likely that in another hundred years time many other Sci-fi ‘ideas’ might become reality. Perhaps advances in physics will enable us to journey through time or out to distant galaxies? Perhaps nanotechnology will alter engineering and A/I will have ushered in a new era of self-driven vehicles?
The world of the future will increasingly look like the descriptions in Sci-fi books.
I would suggest that it is the Sci-fi writers who have made it possible. They inserted the seeds of possibility.
If someone can imagine it then somebody else will eventually make it happen.
Ron Forsythe is my alias for my best Sci-Fi work. I have most of my best Sci-Fi novels displayed and described. Why not click on the link, have a browse and leave me a heartwarming comment or two – or at least a like! Buying a book is optional!
