His job, as always, bored him. So he had during the previous week gone to the ship's transmitter and attached conduits to the permanent electrodes extending from his pineal gland. The conduits had carried his prayer to the transmitter, and from there the prayer had gone into the nearest relay network...

His prayer had been simple....

But the prayer had not failed.

'Mr Tallchief,' his supervisor said...'You're being transferred. How about that?'

'I'll transmit a thankyou prayer,' Ben said, and felt good inside. It always felt good when one's prayers were listened to and answered.

Philip K Dick, A Maze of Death

See that? Just like that, you're in a different world. One in which prayers are electronic transactions, and work. The rest of the story gets weirder, but Dick got that out of the way on the first page.

You don't need a 95-page thesis to set up a universe, people. You just need the right example and some tight prose, and there you are in another world.

Last month my cat disappeared. A week ago I found him and brought him home. Today my cat came back. Now I have two identical cats.

Stanislav Zak, on Twitter

If you can't get a science fiction story out of that…

What kind of universe do your characters accept as normal? What would seem unusual to them? How would they cope with that unusual element? This is an important, though often neglected, part of writing. You can't assume that readers know what you know, but you can bring them into your characters' normalcy with a few words.

'What! Are you out of your mind?' said the guard. 'When was I ever a beggar! If you're cold, here's some twelve-year-old shark-meat – or rather, thirteen-year-old.'

'Many thanks,' said the poet. 'I've no doubt that shark-meat is wholesome food, but unfortunately I cannot stand either the smell or the taste of it.'

Halldor Laxness, World Light

Elsewhere in his writings, Halldor Laxness explains how you age shark meat by burying it in volcanic soil. It's very educational, if not exactly appetising. Iceland is a different world. Shark-meat is a good way to show that.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

This is the introduction to a book that's going to be about clueless people whose only interest in life is to trade in money and social status. If you want a good story about the broader social realities of that time, or a discussion of socio-economics beyond these narrow interests, go read George Eliot. This is going to be about frivolous people. You have been very adroitly warned.

This is why Austen sells so much better than Eliot.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?

She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda's mind was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy – forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

There's criticism inherent in that novel's opening. Here, you are warned that Eliot is not super-concerned with the happiness of 'people of fashion': she's slipped in a reference to poor people…she's not thrilled with those gambling spas in Germany. If you've read the book – or seen the BBC miniseries, which has the added attractions of Hugh Dancy and Romola Garai to make it more fun – you know that the marriage brokering business does not fare well in Daniel Deronda.

These excerpts show you how you can set tone and indicate ideas of normality (and criticism) by what you choose to mention, and what you choose to leave out. Jane Austen's opening talks about 'the neighbours' and their daughters: this story accepts the rules of this superficial society as the norm. Eliot's opening causes us to look at those people in a more distanced fashion: we're made aware of other ways of life, and there's an implicit criticism of the one we're looking at. Daniel, as it turns out, gets to choose where he belongs, and it doesn't turn out to be in the same world as the gambling lady. You pays your money and you takes your choice, but the writer has been honest with you from the start about what 'normal' is in each book.

It doesn't matter what kind of universe your story is in, as long as you give the readers clear notice of it. Make it possible for them to find their way into your story and know how things work here. Is prayer an electronic possibility? Will courtship end in happiness, or the recognition of sad moral failure? (Read the book.) Is thirteen-year-old shark meat on the menu?

Remember: your readers aren't you. They haven't been where you've been, in your head or elsewhere. They may not share your values. If you take them for granted, they'll feel bullied and go away. Learn how to make it clear – without lecturing! – what's 'normal' in your story's world, and they'll be glad to come along for the tour.

Lagniappe

And now, for a glimpse into a really different world. Philip K Dick would need medication after meeting this woman, who insists on living in 1958. She's sort of doing Perky Pat cosplay.

Perky Pat's wardrobe, for instance, there in the closet of the house, the big bedroom closet. Her capri pants, her white cotton short-shorts, her two-piece polka-dot swimsuit, her fuzzy sweaters... and there, in her bedroom, her hi-fi set, her collection of long-playing records...

Philip K Dick, 'In the Days of Perky Pat'

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

27.04.20 Front Page

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