The Big Idea

Some of the most colorful characters in science fiction and fantasy are those whose primary interest is--or seems to be--collecting the money due them. Whether it turns out the hired hand in fact has a hidden heart of gold like Han Solo, or is nothing but surly voice in scarred armor like Boba Fett, characters who enter the plot with apparent or real disdain in the outcome of the story allows them to casually wisecrack when more engaged characters like Luke Skywalker are committed to being sincere, which at times makes them a bit boring. I must say I'm an earnest kind of guy myself, which is probably why I usually write sincere characters who deeply care. About everything. So when my friend  Mike Lynch  invited me to write a story about his "Rescue Broker," a category of character he created himself, I didn't know what to think. A rescue broker is someone who will do pretty much anything a bounty hunter, smuggler, or mercenary would do, but as specifically hire...

In the vast realm of speculative fiction, there exist a number of blends of science fiction and fantasy. "Magical space opera" is term I haven't heard used before, but a relative of mine in the know says isn't original to me. But perhaps what I mean by the term isn't standard and can inspire some stories of a new type. To get to what I mean, let's define space opera. Wikipedia has it as:   "A subgenre of  science fiction  that often emphasizes  romantic , often  melodramatic  adventure, set mainly or entirely in  outer space , usually involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music but is analogous to ' soap opera ' ." A lot people think of classic science fiction stories when they think of space opera (an example I'd give is  Ray Gun Revival , which deliberately tried to revive the style of Golden Age science fiction space opera). But really, as opposed to hard sc...

Inspired by the history of Europeans coming to the New World carrying bacteria to which the native inhabitants had little to no immunity, I thought: "What if aliens visiting Earth carried their own sort of infection or infestation, to which we humans had no immunity?" Sort of a War of the Worlds scenario in reverse... But I'm sure that sort of thing has already been done by someone, aliens carrying virulent disease(s) humans don't carry. So what if the infestation were of nanites--what  if nanites become a standard part of healthcare for any advanced technological species? (Just as hand washing and sterilization of medical instruments become standard at a certain point of development--once bacteria are discovered and found to be potentially harmful.) So that nanites are literally crawling all over (and inside) the bodies of high-tech aliens (or perhaps time travelers from Earth's distant future). What if these nanites potentially posed a risk to the human race? ...

I just finished reading Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir . Regular readers of my blog know I’m keenly interested in a variety of science fiction and fantasy topics and as Christian writer I’ve taken a particular interest in some aspects of the supernatural. Specifically, I’ve written numerous posts that relate to the topic of angels (my last was  Angels and Aliens ). So I was keenly interested in how Demon would portray fallen angles, a.k.a. demons. By the way, in talking about this book, I’m naturally going to commit some spoilers… Overall, in spite of a few ticks that are other than human, such as the demon in the story being fascinated with watching people eat and drink, this work does quite a lot to humanize the demonic, though I don’t think that was the author’s intent. In fact, I’d say the demon Lucian is really every bit as much an empathetic figure as the narrating protagonist, Clay. Again, I don’t believe Tosca Lee intended that, but I think that’s the case. I f...

A “Boltzmann brain” is the name for an intelligence that would randomly generate itself out of nothing. In some cosmological theories, believe it or not, the number of Boltzmann brains are thought to outnumber every human being who has ever lived or will ever live. By a long shot. Please allow me to explain this odd concept I just learned about a few days ago. Boltzmann  was an Austrian physicist, best known for the development of statistical mechanics, who proposed that the entire universe could have randomly generated itself out of nothing, even though that would be a highly improbable occurrence (to say the least). However, if the universe is thought to have existed forever, sooner or later it would have happened, was his reasoning--because even if the odds against something happening are one in one trillion or lower, given infinite time, even something unbelievably unlikely will eventually happen. Eventually--as in a trillion trillion trillion trillion years perhaps. This...

Imagine a set of gag monsters, that could be included in stories for outright slapstick, or which in slightly altered versions of what I propose could provide some needed comic relief. Such as a vampire who has the standard hollow fangs—but uses them to impale rinds and drink from citrus…and who turns into a fruit bat instead of a vampire bat. Perhaps this sort of vampire could be blonde and always have a deep rich tan (from sleeping in a tanning booth, of course). Naturally, such a creature would tend to wear white—or maybe really bright colors, like yellow or orange…and would drive a lime-colored VW beetle or something. And work out a lot…and wear spandex…(or perhaps earth tones? Live in a cabin? And recycle everything?) Imagine a less-than-successful supervillain trying to create a zombie virus and discovering in clinical trials (‘cause you’d have to try it out first, right?) that nearly everything about the virus works as planned…it does turn people into shuffling idiots, ...

The “transporter” is a widely-known piece of Star Trek technology. For the uninitiated, essentially the device grabs hold of you (stepping on the transporter deck is optional but is somehow helpful, perhaps in reducing the amount of energy required) and converts you into a beam of energy. The beam of energy goes a certain distance (the distance is limited to tens of thousands of kilometers) and spontaneously reassembles the person that underwent the process into his or her original state. Maybe for another post I’ll talk about how teleportation could perhaps conceivably work…but for now, let’s just assume the system really does work as the shows and movies portray it working…I gotta say though that I would under no circumstances be comfortable with my body being converted into a beam of energy and being reassembled elsewhere…what about signal interference? I don’t know how the beam moves or what form of energy it consists of (Star Trek isn’t clear about that), but whatever it uses...