Writing popular fiction Read Online Free PDF Page B

a simple, relatively inexpensive stardrive which will permit space travel at a ridiculously low cost. Suddenly, the stars are ours—not in thirty or fifty or a hundred years, but
now
. The powerful social force of this process or device (Harrison never makes that entirely clear) spreads antagonism among world governments, because if any one country owned the Daleth Effect, it would soon so dominate as to make other nations powerless.
    Wilson Tucker's
Wild Talent
deals with the emergence of ESP abilities in the first of a new breed of human beings and details the fear and doubt such a discovery would cause in today's society.
    It is not essential, in the new discovery story, to adequately explain, through present-day science or pseudo-scientific double-talk, how the discovery
works
. It is always preferable, of course, to ground the device in a bedrock of acceptable scientific theory. But this type of science fiction story is far more concerned with the "how" and the "what" than with the technical-theoretical "why." And, since it usually takes place in the present or the very near future, it is the story type which requires the least amount of extrapolation and research. Indeed, many new discovery science fiction novels are set in such a near future that they are not labeled as science fiction, but as suspense: Michael Crichton's best-selling
The Andromeda Strain
, and
The Tashkent Crisis
by William Craig.

SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM STORY
    Fifth, we have the
scientific problem story
.. This form is actually best suited to the short story, unless the problem the characters must solve is so complex, with so many ramifications, that the novel length is justified. In this form, the author confronts his hero with a seemingly insoluble scientific problem and forces him to use his wits to overcome staggering odds.
    A typical sort of problem story might be this: The hero has landed his spaceship on an uninhabited, lifeless world, without benefit of his rockets which are out of order. As he fixes the engines, he discovers the planet's atmosphere is combustible, of a gasoline-like vapor. If he had landed with the rockets blazing, the entire kaboodle would have exploded; he was lucky. But, now that he's down, how in the devil can he take off again? Even if the engines are repaired, can they lift off without igniting the atmosphere around them and completely destroying themselves in the resultant explosion? One answer is this: Since the atmosphere is composed of gasoline-like vapor, and is not pure oxygen, it cannot explode; there is simply nowhere for the expanding vapor to explode
to
. All it can do is burn, and that cannot harm them at all as long as they remain inside their escaping, steel ship.
    Unfortunately, the problem story leaves room for little more than adequate characterization, and the plot is severely constricted by the necessity to solve the main, center-stage problem which usually concerns, not people, but a scientific phenomenon. Many well-known science fiction writers began with problem stories, but Hal Clement (
Mission of Gravity, Star Light)
is the only writer to have made a solid career from them.

ALTERED PAST STORY
    Sixth, we have the
altered past story
. These tales are based on the notion that the world would have been substantially different than it is, if some ma/or historical event had not happened, or if it had been reversed. For example, Philip K. Dick wrote a masterful Hugo Award-winning novel (The Hugo is the science fiction world's equivalent of the Oscar)
The Man in the High Castle
, which dealt with a world in which Germany and Japan won World War II and split the United States between them. That idea, clearly, is staggering. Keith Roberts'
Pavanne
tells the story of a world in which England did not defeat the Spanish Armada, Spain Catholicized England, and the Middle Ages, when science was considered necromancy and was banned, have never ended.
    The wealth of story ideas is obvious. What if the South had won