Beyond the Physics: Why Imagination is the Heart of Science Fiction

A series of questions have been sent to me, for me to comment on.

What common misconception about writing Science Fiction would you like to challenge?

This is a good question, and I've been thinking about it for many years. I used to think, way back in the Dark Ages, that it didn't matter what you wrote because readers would read anything as long as they found it fun and entertaining. But that's not exactly true. Your stories have to have good characters,with good plot lines. You have to have challenges and dangers, with defeat right around the corner. You have to make it like an Indiana Jones story. Just when you think you've won, things go sour and then you have to make things go the way your hero wants them to, even when someone you character loves dies.

A good story has loss as well as gains at the end. If everything works out good all the time, the story becomes repetitive and the readers stop reading it. 

But it's more than just about good stories. All over the internet, every single day, physical scientists tell us aliens won't visit us. That they can't visit us, or we can't visit them. That Star Trek is impossible. That traveling the universe is impossible.

They sound like sore losers. They have forgotten the key word in Science Fiction, and that's the word FICTION. People need entertainment and hope, and that's what fiction provides them.

While Science Fiction, like all fiction, entertains and inspires and leads you to better worlds and more hope.

Science Fiction doesn't have to be real, so long as it entertains and amues us, gives us hope, a world outside of our world, makes us laugh, makes us cry, lifts us up

Science Fiction isn't the only genre that does that. All fiction does that, too.

And here are great words from a great man who was also a great scientist. Albert Einstein once said: "The greatest force in the universe is imagination."