Speculate Responsibly...

Or risk getting lost in the dream.

Humans are dreamers.

We wonder, reflect, puzzle, and muse.

We love to look at “what is”, and then ask “what if?”

“How far does this go?”

“What will happen when we get there?”

“Is it even possible to do?”

It’s natural to ask these questions, but if you’re not careful, it’s easy to get lost in the dream and forget where you began.

Such is the nature of imagination.

That’s what makes Science Fiction so powerful. It transports you to a place that is both foreign and familiar. You’re grounded in plausibility while adventuring in an alien world.

For creatives of all types, reading science fiction can inspire your own work to be more plausible, logical, imaginative, and simple.

Here’s how it can do that.

What Is Science Fiction?

Science Fiction is an enormous genre, with more subgenres than you’d expect.

Steampunk, cyberpunk, dystopian, space military, space opera, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, robots, time travel and plenty more, all fall within the genre of science fiction.

You eventually get to the point where it’s more reasonable to ask, “what isn’t science fiction?”

Experts far more qualified than myself have debated its exact definition for decades, and as far as I can tell, they still can’t define it.

The problem is that science is inseparable from reality.

Romance and fear are both biological and chemical.

Even fantasy has physics, otherwise there wouldn’t be any rules for the magic to bend.

According to author Damon Knight — “science fiction is what we point to when we say it”, which isn’t very helpful, but also painfully accurate.

Still, there are some commonly agreed upon traits that help publishers, bookstores, and streamers like Netflix decide how to market a creative product as science fiction.

Sci-fi Feels Possible

If it doesn’t feel like it can happen, it’s probably not sci-fi. Or at least, it’s not mostly sci-fi.

Science fiction is plausible. It may not be the most likely outcome, but it’s grounded in the fact that it could happen according to scientific principles.

Sometimes things just need grounding, and that includes creative expression.

Having your head in the clouds can be fun for inspiration, but without some form of stability it’s easy to lose your sense of direction.

This holds true for even the most abstract of content.

Let’s say you create short form videos about supernatural phenomena. If you don’t ground the viewer in some backstory, what separates your narrative from that of a 5 year olds?

Ground your story on something stable by having a starting point that feels possible.

Sci-fi Is Logical

Science fiction comes in two types: hard and soft.

Hard science fiction is where the author includes accurate details about the technology.

A common modern example is “The Martian”, by Andy Weir, which was made into a feature-length film staring Matt Damon.

If you read the book, you see the thought process and justification for everything the protagonist does. In a way, it almost feels like you’re having a conversation with high-school science teacher as they explain why something works the way it does.

Soft science fiction is where the story and characters are the focal point, and the scientific details can be few and far between.

An easy example of this would be Christopher Nolan movies, such as “Inception”, “Interstellar”, and even “Batman Begins”.

In “Interstellar”, you learn crops such as corn and wheat are dying, which provides a sense of urgency to leave the planet. Why are they dying? You’re never told. When Matthew McConaughey’s character “Cooper” survives the descent into a black hole, you’re also never told how he survives the immense gravitational pull. He just does.

The common thread, regardless of how soft or hard the science may be, is logic.

Because of A, we must do B.

We have to solve Y because of X.

Science fiction teaches causality.

Solid logic that comes from a plausible beginning can lead to spectacular creative liberty.

Sci-fi Imagines

Speculation is fun.

This is where you get to sit back and ask “what if"?

If you laid the groundwork properly, you can get away with far more than you’d expect.

In the film “Inception”, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character “Cobb” is shown as being a capable fighter in the real world. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character “Arthur” explains the dream technology was built by the military to train soldiers in impossible scenarios that they couldn’t die from.

From there, the viewer finds themselves in a literal dream world that feels like it could happen, despite things being truly incredible.

For creators of all types, this is what it’s truly about. Unlimited creative expression.

Just understand, speculation is easier to buy into if there’s firm grounding and logic before it.

Sci-fi Simplifies

Very few people actually want to read textbooks. They’re boring, technical, and somehow always thicker than you want them to be.

Great science fiction authors make difficult concepts approachable. If they didn’t, you’d just be reading a textbook with a little more flare to it, which wouldn’t be much of an improvement.

When you read science fiction, take notice when you learn something new. If you find yourself casually understanding a scientific concept all while still being engrossed in the narrative, you have a great book on your hands.

Things obviously have depth, and simplifying has its limits.

But if your story dreams big while being logical, grounded and simple, there isn’t a person alive that won’t want to hear how it ends.

Your job as a storyteller is to bring others into your dream without getting lost in the clouds. Science fiction teaches you how to do that without compromising creative expression along the way.

Put simply, science fiction teaches you to speculate responsibly.