Fifty Shades of To Defend the Earth

So another commenter is asking about a third novel in the To Defend the Earth Universe. We're grateful and so glad someone enjoyed TDTE and To Survive the Earth so much they want more of it. We have ideas, lots of them. Space battles among the moons of Saturn and Pluto, an attack on the alien home world, and liberating Mars.

But reality hit those ideas like a fly swatter. TSTE just didn't do very well. We remain baffled. 

We don't have much buzz for the project anymore and if we are going to do a space series, we'd much rather our ideas go into the 2543 project. This would be our version of The Expanse*, but with aliens showing up through a wormhole and forcing Earth and Mars to work together. Three books. Someday.

At this point it's not a matter of can't. We can write whatever the hell we want. If we decide to write Fifty Shades of Will, there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it. We just don't want to writ about TDTE right now.

[But you do want to write Fifty Shades of Will-Ed]

Someday, TDTE we mean.

[Sure you do-Ed]

We'd like to point out that we waited 30 years for Jerry Pournelle to finish Janissaries. We really need to read the final novel. Also, we really need to re-read the previous three novels. Should we dig through the boxes in the basement or just order new ones...?

*Season 1 is the best season of TV science fiction since season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 4 of The Expanse is almost as bad as season 1 of TNG.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 11/30/19

The next scifi novel we write should be To Liberate Mars and the biggest story should focus on the Jai defense from their POV, exclusively from the Mars commander HQ.

The commander can be Zetroc Nanreh's right hand man or Jai, anyway, and we can learn much about both.

All we know is that Task Force Mars failed and Admiral Ganesan was killed. How and why? What happens next?

SJWs Ruin Science Fiction

An interesting article at The Federalist about Social Justice Warriors, science fiction and self publishing.  Basically the SJWs have infiltrated science fiction, as they have YA Fiction as noted yesterday, and are demanding a writer's work be identity based and intersectional.

Indy published books account for something like half the market. Just check the 'customers also bought' tab on our own Amazon page. The reader's appetite for alternate history is insatiable. For some reason traditional publishers don't get this. Actually here's the reason:

The book industry establishment is identity politics-obsessed, an angry brigade who seized control of the traditional publishing industry years ago. Publishers and editors berate independent authors regularly via blogs and social media, such as Tor Books’ Teresa Nielsen Hayden rambling on Twitter about how an independent No. 1 bestseller on Amazon is “not a bestselling author by any definition of the term used by readers and booksellers,” or the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), Cat Rambo, calling a sci-fi blog post cheering on independent self-publishing “egregiously stupid” in the comments of sci-fi gossip site File 770.

Indy books are poking their nose into the SF awards tent, Nebulas, Hugos, Dragon, etc etc.

The SJWs don't like it one bit. 

We here at William Stroock dot blogspot dot com don't begrudge anyone their reading habits, and if someone wants dystopian science fiction about gay African teens that's their business.

We know what our readers want. So do a lot of Indy authors just like us: alternate history, technothrillers, alien invasion. 

We know this becuase that's what we always wanted to read. You know us, reader(s) and we know you. 

I am the reader and the reader is me.

Meanwhile traditional publishers loose market share.

Wither Science Fiction?

The Daily Beast laments that Star Wars made science fiction stupid:

“When you say ‘science fiction’ to Hollywood,” says Marc Bernardin a TV writer and podcaster who has been an editor for The Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Times, “they see space opera and laser beams.”

Of course Star Wars isn't science fiction. Lucas gives the game away with the lead: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

Star Wars is mythology.

The above article talks about some great pre-Star Wars sci fi movies. These are of course 2001, Planet of the Apes, we'd add Soylent Green among others.

Science fiction must needs a speculative element. Soylent Green takes place in 2022. We're just a few years away now, and nothing speculated in the movie or book has come to pass. The movie is jaw-dropping all the same. Here is a vision of a third world America where people live in poverty and are sustained by soy chips. Otherwise its a bland police procedural that ends too quickly. The source material, Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, is better.

When trying to predict the future, the worst thing one can do is take current trends and extrapolate them to their conclusion. In 1980 no one thought the Cold War would be over by 1990. Of course in 1990 everyone thought the Japanese would rule the future....heh. Francis Fukayama prediction The End of History!  Hey, remember peak oil, or the population bomb? Try not to laugh.

There is some smart science fiction out there today. The article mentions The Expanse, which we can't recommend too strongly. Arrival deals with aliens, communication, paranoia and time perception and is destined to be one of the greatest sci fi films ever.