Why Sci-Fi/Fantasy?

"Here be dragons"

Great song from the game Guild Wars!

I think it's pretty obvious why most scifi/fantasy authors write in the genre - because reality is far too confining for the imagination.

Of course some very strange things happen in the real world, but when you write scifi/fantasy you can really let your imagination soar.

My current (first) series is about parallel universes, and I love the fact the characters could literally end up anywhere.

I live in reality (somewhat). I read and write to escape it!

That's true. I figure it's better than whisky although a dram and a writing session is heaven especially if that dram is in a cocoa.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer, but not a writer of sci-fi / fantasy. I always loved science fiction as a subject, but when it came to writing I fell under that ''it's not real writing'' propaganda and the result was that I spent a great deal of time trying to write something that just never felt right; trying to write ''real'' fiction. But, no matter how much I tried, I could never finish anything and whatever I did seemed wrong to me somehow (perhaps boring would be a better way of describing it). So, all that time I was thinking: ''Writing is too hard. I can't finish what I start. I can't even write a first draft. I'm never gonna become a writer.''

Now, fast forward into my early thirties, I finally decided to quit that and try something different. I was still thinking I was never gonna be a real writer, but I figured since I still kind of wanted to write, why not write something that seems fun to me, so I started writing sci-fi. Today I have a finished first draft of a novel (finally) and I'm doing revisions and carefully creating the second draft. It's some sort of a cross between fantasy and science fiction and it's just such a damn fun to be writing it. It gives me freedom that I never felt I had before, I can just come up with any kind of a crazy idea and turn it into something that seems real. I actually love every part of the process: outlining, plotting, character development...even revising it! And I'm a guy who started and never finished half a dozen novels in the past. None of it means that I'm actually gonna end up being a published author and my writing may not end up entertaining anyone else but myself, but I feel fine about it as long as it feels fun doing it!

So, to answer the question that started this thread: It's real fun to write sci-fi / fantasy, that's why people do it!

cuz I like Star Trek init?

No really, it is

It was #$% damn, Star Trek. Yes, I blame Star Trek. There I was 12 years minding my own business and previously bored of this "sci-fi" stuff and they just had to put a Star Trek maraton on television, well it was all downhill from there because man I was hooked after Spock got resurrected on genesis and how they saved a whale from the past.
Also, I am a bit of a nerd gamer/programmer/system analyst so I like the technological aspect.

Devon.Q.Ly said:

It was #$% damn, Star Trek. Yes, I blame Star Trek. There I was 12 years minding my own business and previously bored of this "sci-fi" stuff and they just had to put a Star Trek maraton on television, well it was all downhill from there because man I was hooked after Spock got resurrected on genesis and how they saved a whale from the past.
Also, I am a bit of a nerd gamer/programmer/system analyst so I like the technological aspect.

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Star Trek was what got me interested in SF, as well. The Next Generation was what got me hooked probably also around 12 years...

It's simple. Those two genres are the only ones that draw me in completely, fill my mind with possibility, and lift my spirit and soul to unimagined levels.

I hate to think what my life would be like without them.

'Cuz I wanna!

Also, Star Trek. And Star Wars.

Life is uncanny and full of parallels with the darker things of reason. I like to get them down on paper lest they escape

pH

When I was very young I was asked to imagine a story about myself and I was to read it in front of the class and get a grade.
I couldn't do it.
I remember getting a bad grade and being berated in front of class for not finishing such a simple task.
For the longest time I thought I didn't have what it took for imagining things and I buried myself in all sorts of science fiction and in art where I seemed to have a better way of expressing my imagination..

It probably wasn't until I took a typing class(age 14 or 15); and to self teach I took a novel of Edgar Rice Burroughs and retyped it on a ream of paper using an old smith corona non-electric and went from front to back to complete the entire novel.(There might be a manila envelope full of loose pages somewhere that is proof I might have violated some laws; but I don't know what happened to it.)

Somewhere along the line I realized that I could do this stuff and I started thinking about some of my own what ifs.

As with the coffee 'What else?' Could you seriously see me getting involved with romance - little bachelor me who's never had a romantic impulse in his life? War stories, 'real life', erotica? Actually, relative to my youth I live in a science fiction world; even if I have never set foot - or tentacle or finger - on another celestial body, I have followed the exploits of those, organic or silicatious, who have. Coming out of a severely scientific and technical education, surfing the shockwave just behind the cutting edge, SF is my natural environment - I live in my former self's future.

But I cohabit with dragons, too. In some ways very conventional dragons, in others revolutionaries against traditional values and behaviors. Brave New Dragons. Sociological individuals from an antisocial, solitary species. Who must, I suppose be fantasy. Some of the older residents will remember them.

So, as I said, what else?

BDFiala said:

I always loved science fiction as a subject, but when it came to writing I fell under that ''it's not real writing'' propaganda

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I've seen some of that too. It's ignorant. Look at the nonsense that goes on in many soap operas, love stories, war stories or "realistic" crime drama. Much of it is about as credible as My Little Pony and half as well written. Which is more realistic, Aliens or the latest James Bond? The one that could at some point happen, where the characters behave like credible human beings, or the one that is provably pure wish-fulfilment fantasy but happens to be allegedly set in the present day? Personally, I've got to the point where if someone writes off SFF as nonsense, I think that it's their loss. They lack the mental flexibility to comprehend the form. That's their problem.

The Big Peat said:

Fantasy is where myth meets history.

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Which sums my thoughts up as well. I'm currently writing "fantasy" set in the real world. It's fantasy because the things that people believed in back then (Viking times) like trolls and divination, exist. I set out to write about the world my characters live in as they believe it.

Toby Frost said:

I've seen some of that too. It's ignorant. Look at the nonsense that goes on in many soap operas, love stories, war stories or "realistic" crime drama. Much of it is about as credible as My Little Pony and half as well written. Which is more realistic, Aliens or the latest James Bond? The one that could at some point happen, where the characters behave like credible human beings, or the one that is provably pure wish-fulfilment fantasy but happens to be allegedly set in the present day? Personally, I've got to the point where if someone writes off SFF as nonsense, I think that it's their loss. They lack the mental flexibility to comprehend the form. That's their problem.

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I agree with you now, but it took me a long while to reach that conclusion. Now it actually seems so stupid to me that I ever had that attitude. Well, you live you learn! I'm still young enough to change my mistakes, only 36

These days I could say I write fantasy because I enjoy consuming it more than any other genre, but that's not how it started. I didn't choose to write fantasy, it just happened. For some reason I've been writing more sci-fi in the past year.

The Big Peat said:

Fantasy is where myth meets history.

I can give you a thousand other reasons, but that's the big one.

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Vast possibilities.