The Noticeboard Is Not A Dartboard?

[aesmael]

    One area I am interested in exploring in my writing is why people write and how the kinds of stories are affected by the world in which they live. What kind of stories, for example, would a writer write if they were living in a world such as we might see in a typical fantasy novel? If the real world has magic and gods what kind of world do you invent when you write fantasy? Or science fiction?
    This is being mentioned now because I was just reading an interview with Alastair Reynolds and one of his answers sparked a few new questions along those lines.

"Right now, as a science fiction writer, there are certain things I
don’t want people to discover. You know, I really would be pissed off
if tomorrow there was a big headline in the papers about scientist
discovering intelligent aliens in Barnard Star, or something like that,
because that would just kill what I was writing. There’s a conflict."

    I have a very vague outline of what could - possibly - become a novel in some distant epoch when civilisation arises on this world of ours. We shall see how it goes.