Title:
The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe
Author:
George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier
Publisher:
Writer's Digest Books, 1993
ISBN
0-89879-536-2

If you've ever tried your hand at writing science fiction like I have, then you are no doubt aware that one of the trickiest parts is creating a story setting that is believable. Most of us understand enough science to avoid the obvious mistakes, like having a rocket coast to a halt because it runs out of fuel, or using the word "lightyear" as a measurement of time.

But the devil is in the details, as they say.

The Writer's Guide is thorough survey of these details. The authors proceed methodically through topics ranging from what's what in the universe, to speculating on future science. I found myself reading closely the chapters on creating a solar system, since that's a problem I've been trying to deal with in the last little while.

There is one important caution to consider. If you want to write innovative science fiction, you might do well to ignore books like this altogether. The consistency of correct science is a fine thing, sure, but in the face of some of the assumed impossibilities that are the stock-in-trade of most science fiction, worrying about a planet's distance from its Sun makes that consistency rather foolish, a hobgoblin that shouldn't worry authors speculating on the rather larger questions of existence. In particular, The Writer's Guide is in many places a survey of what has been written. Tying oneself to such a survey seems to me to be defeating the very purpose of writing science fiction. If, however, this book is used, cautiously, as an aide in avoiding the kinds of gaffes that turn science fiction into space opera, then it is definitely worth its place on your bookshelf.