Writing popular fiction

quizzed you about it, you could answer him with the same alacrity you'd answer questions about the real world, the world of today.
    As a potential writer of science fiction, you would be well-advised to read
Dune
by Frank Herbert, a science fiction classic set in the far future that has sold more than a million copies and which contains one of the most detailed futures imaginable. Likewise, Robert Heinlein's million-copy classic,
Stranger in a Strange Land
, a book which details a near future so well that few authors have ever approached its catalogue of extrapolative minutiae, is well worth your perusal.
    You should understand that not every novel in this genre requires such a wealth of background in the finished draft-but you should have your future so well thought out that you
can
apply detailed background in any scene that demands it. Some writers keep elaborate notebooks full of background data for the future they're drawing, and Robert Heinlein has even gone so far as to plot a Chart of Future History, outlining major events over several hundred years and slotting his stories into this future. I find that careful thought, before beginning the first page, plus a few notes is all that I need. I don't keep notebooks or charts, but hold the entire scheme in my head, to keep it more flexible than it would be if I wrote it out on paper. Each author, through trial and error, must find out which method best suits his temperament.
    A warning: When considering all of the researched and extrapolated elements of your near future, be sure that they mesh into a coherent whole. For example, if you extrapolate a future U.S. run by a right-wing military junta, democracy abolished, do not also portray a society where the arts flourish. These two elements—dictatorship and artistic energy—have never co-existed in one country at the same time, and seem unlikely to in the future. Do not portray a future where the Christian Church governs the world and sexual liberty is encouraged; the church would have to change drastically for this to be believable. In short, a society works only when the majority of its parts are compatible and when few if any of its parts are downright hostile to the majority's philosophy.

THE FAR FUTURE
    When the story is set centuries from today, on this or another world, you have a greater imaginative freedom and correspondingly less research to do. No one can know what life will be like in 4000 A.D., nor how it might be structured on an alien world. No amount of research into the sciences can prepare the writer for accurate prediction when such spans of time are involved. The only rule, for far future stories, is this: your future must be consistent in its detail (not such a different rule than the last one we talked about in discussing near-future backgrounds).
    For example, don't build a future in which mankind has made robots as able and intelligent as human beings—and then have your hero and other humans tending mundane, daily jobs. In that sort of future, unless a logical alternative is given, the robots would do all such work.
    Nor should a writer set his story on an alien world with three times Earth's gravity, then let his heroes move about as if they were at home. Earthborn men would move slowly, painfully, and clumsily in such an ambience, for they would weigh three times what they weigh on Earth, and they would feel as if they were carrying a huge, heavy burden. Nor should the writer create aliens for this world which look like men, because triple gravity would produce short, heavy people with only vague—and perhaps no—resemblance to humanity as we know it.
    Researching these backgrounds is not a simple matter. For instance, how could you expect to find a book about life on a planet with three times Earth's gravity—a non-fiction book with tables, charts, and graphs? If your idea is to use a world with heavy gravity, you have to start your research by learning everything you can about Earth's gravity, then extrapolate or extend from there. Unless you're accustomed to the often dreary and difficult prose of science books, juvenile and even children's non-fiction on the subject most concerning you will prove to be a treasure trove. In these books, the fundamentals—usually all you'll need to begin your story—are simply explained, easily grasped and retained. And whereas the average library may be short on available science books, it will have thousands of children's books covering