Sunday, March 13, 2011

Confessions of A budding Sci Fi novelist

I love science fiction and I love politics. So I am writing a novel that will combine the two into a fun and engaging package. The journey has not been easy. Not in the slightest. The old roomers about Louis L'Amour writing a Western novel in a single day, with a type writer, on a busy new York street are the stuff of legend. Having tried to write a novel has made this story even less believable then before I tried such an enticing enterprise. The number of re-writes I have done so far are staggering, as inconsistencies are worked out.

Perhaps the biggest re-write came as a result of a deeply influential online philosopher, named Stefan Molyneux Of.... Freedomain Radio . No single change has provoked more alterations then how I would define the life choices of my main character. My main character started out as a James Bond type figure but with a wife in the same profession and some added background in communications and sciences. Fortunately my contact with Mr Molyneux and a sort of real world proof of concept in the Egyptian revolution combined together to make this original main character explode into a million pieces in my mind. I knew from that moment that my main character could not be a spy working for a government of any type. A "hero" loyally working as a government employee, as James Bond did, now, just seems grotesque and silly.

Having come in contact with Ayn Rand my most basic assumptions did not really change, in a bone deep way. This change in outlook, however flirtatious, is more fundamental. Limited government just isn't the stuff of my passionate political fantasies anymore as it was during my libertarian phase. Some vague budding sense of enlightened Anarchy, is definitely whispering seductively and touching me tenderly now. Letting this philosophical midnight tryst and change of lovers, bleed into the ink of my novel seems unavoidable.

My original main characters, just could not survive this change in myself. So an unassuming Canadian stay at home DAD, has slain my original government trained Muay Thai wielding, master spy. Now I remake the character into a former nano-tech researcher, determined to make the world as safe as he can for his young children... Caught up in a world still vulnerable to the catastrophic abuse of technology by violent adolescent governments... and a few "hidden and surprising outsiders" too.

Thanks Stefan Molyneux, for killing a main character, before I let it out into the light of a publisher for review. Slaying bad novel characters before they can darken the printed page must all be in a days work, for a good practitioner of the philosophical arts.