Writing Relatable Scifi (part 4)

Some of the best science fiction out there has most of its roots in a reality we can relate to. Writing scifi can be extremely tricky because it often ceases to be scifi if you give it a few years—most of the visions of scifi authors have actually become reality within a few decades, and people in different fields (medicine, aerospace, military, etc.) have admitted that their designs and inventions were often inspired by something from a scifi story. The magic of scifi, unlike fantasy, is that it often involves the possible or probable. If you are a scifi writer looking for inspiration, try not to look too far, because you might find your answer right in front of you. For example, take a look at your smartphone. Imagine how amazing and improbable this device would seem to someone in the 1950’s. It would be nearly impossible for people of that era to imagine such an amazing device. Someone from the 1980’s might consider it an eventual possibility, though, with the advent of home computers and video game consoles. In the 1990’s, it might even seem probable, when considering the tech explosion that was the internet. Of course, if you showed a smartphone to someone during medieval times, the obvious reaction would be shouts of witchcraft and sorcery. Considering all this, science fiction writers just need to look at every-day technologies and try to see how they would naturally develop in a decade or two. But what then?