{"id":30765,"date":"2015-03-24T04:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30765"},"modified":"2015-10-11T13:54:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:54:40","slug":"writing-science-fiction-for-the-modern-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/03\/24\/writing-science-fiction-for-the-modern-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing science fiction for the modern audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/accordingtohoyt.com\/2015\/03\/17\/inclusive-of-psychopaths-frank-j-fleming\/\" target=\"_blank\">Frank J. Fleming<\/a> thinks he&#8217;s found the magic formula for writing science fiction books that will appeal to today&#8217;s more sensitive, enlightened readers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What makes good science fiction? Is it a fast-paced story? Interesting characters? Unpredictable twists and turns?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I had those outdated ideas in mind when I wrote my first novel, <em>Superego<\/em>. But as we all know, the true purpose of science fiction now is inclusiveness. Entertainment is okay, I guess, but what we really need to focus on is making sure everyone feels cared for and included and that no one feels weird, no matter how weird they are.<\/p>\n<p>This is difficult for me as a white, heterosexual, cisgender male. I\u2019m basically committing a hate crime just by existing. I\u2019m not even sure that in this day and age I should be allowed to write science fiction. Still, I decided to examine my novel to determine how inclusive it is.<\/p>\n<p>I first used the Bechdel Test, as that\u2019s a nice objective measure. I ran into a problem right away, though, because <em>Superego<\/em> is written in the first-person perspective of a male character. It\u2019s like I didn\u2019t even try. Still, there are a number of named female characters in the story, and a few times they do speak to each other. Most of the time, they\u2019re talking about the main (male) character, but I did locate a short conversation between two women about one getting the other a chair.<\/p>\n<p>Boom! Passed the Bechdel Test. It\u2019s a very feminist novel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frank J. Fleming thinks he&#8217;s found the magic formula for writing science fiction books that will appeal to today&#8217;s more sensitive, enlightened readers: What makes good science fiction? Is it a fast-paced story? Interesting characters? Unpredictable twists and turns? Unfortunately, I had those outdated ideas in mind when I wrote my first novel, Superego. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,57],"tags":[939,463,85],"class_list":["post-30765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-humour","tag-bechdeltest","tag-parody","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-80d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30766,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30765\/revisions\/30766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}