SPACE AESTHETIC.
for all you folk writing space based tales, like me.
youreallwrite reblogged
Re: Space and spaceships
I guess the key to any science fiction with space travel, is to make it believable and create a unique mood. (And by believable, I mean consistent with your established canon, which still can be 100% random nonsense.)
For the characters, to get the attitude, style and psychology, study all sorts of ships’ crews, flight attendants, miners, ambassadors, traders, pilots, tourist buses, nomadic lifestyles…
Some prompts:
- What’s the mission of the spacecraft? Who is on it, and why? How safe is it? What sacrifices does the crew need to make to space travel? (example: the navigators from Dune)
- How many people are needed to operate the ship? How many passengers can they take? What’s the dynamics like among them? How does the crew affect the structure of the ship? (compare: Nostromo from Alien and Starship UK from Doctor Who)
- How serious is your style? How much realistic science is there in it? (compare: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy vs. 2001: A Space Odyssey)
- What kind of technology makes the space travel possible? (example: a TARDIS, the sentient machine/creature/spaceship/time machine “thing” in Doctor Who)
- How do they navigate at such speed (or do that something else they use) to travel that enormous distance? (example: the use of spice melange and navigators in the Dune series)
- Is there artificial gravity on the ship? What kind of life support is the most practical? (consider: the aquatic Xindi ships in Star Trek)
- How is the communication in deep space? Easy, slow, impossible? Is there an issue with translating alien languages? (example: hyper-wave relay in Asimov’s Foundation series)
- How long does it take to travel between inhabited planets? Years? Weeks? Months? Days? (example: the artificial sleep pods on Nostromo)
- How does the crew cope with limited spaces and new planets? (example: when some of the crew is losing it, in like every third episode of any Star Trek series)
- Is space travel expensive? Are there low budget private missions? (example: Serenity in Firefly or the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, both are old and privately owned)
- What about storage space and personal belongings? How comfortable is to live on a spacecraft? How much is everybody allowed? (example: Inara’s shuttle in Firefly)
- What about the food? How is it supplied? Is it grown there, brought from home or collected from random locations? (example: Janeway looks for coffee in the nebula…or some supplies to have means to replicate it)
- What kind of weapons do they have? Shields? Camouflage? Are these needed? (consider: the Doctor’s TARDIS has never operated any firepower, but she has really good shields, and hacks into people’s brains to avoid detection)
- How often can they talk to relatives at home? Is distance and isolation an issue? Are there any couples, families, kids allowed on the ship?
Don’t panic, most sci-fi universes use unrealistic, made up science. You don’t have to be a scientist to write a good science fiction.