What Readers Are Looking For In The Best Science Fiction Books
Lots of us take books to bed with us. While most of us are hoping they’ll help us fall asleep, I think a few of the best science fiction books would keep the reader wide awake rather than sweeping us off to dreamland.
A well-written science fiction novel should create a desire in the reader to pursue the story, to dwell in the new world or universe created within its pages, fraught with the unexpected, the magical, or the downright unusual. The best science fiction books are classic, and deliver every story twist to keep us riveted to the page.
But unfortunately our new writers who break out into the published world and have the creditable right to call themselves authors are responsible for making more people look at the back of their eyelids for six to eight hours than most politicians speeches or even church ministers delivering a sermon. When it comes to becoming the author of the best science fiction books around, many fall short.
Some of these books could put the pharmaceutical companies making sleeping tablets out of business. While not addictive, they should carry a warning that it could harm your ability to think clearly. While it is tempting to list those I consider worthy of helping you beat insomnia, I can’t remember the titles. So much for being nominated for the best science fiction books Hall of Fame.
My advice to writers hoping to write one of the best science fiction books: be creative. Don’t wallow in predictability. Readers want more we don’t want to force ourselves to read to the last page, in desperate hope of finding something surprising and original, only to find the same drivel we’ve read in the past ten books. After the same disappointments, it is hard not to just skip to the last chapter and see if it is worth our while!
There seems to be rules in the writing world written on tablets of stone handed down from generation to generation laying the foundation for writers to build their work on. It is not retarding the new themes or science fictions upward and onward advance into new realms but the expected good guy kills bad guy, the hero gets the women and the minority force overcomes the superior forces of the evil oppressor with the help of a laptop or a secretly concealed boy scouts penknife.
We won’t gasp in shock and dismay when the lights go out, it isn’t a surprise that the shields are just barely holding at 15%, and unless there is an interesting twist to the fact that the genius child that no one realized was a genius is solving problems that the trained adults couldn’t handle, we won’t consider your book one of the best science fiction books.
If you are going to write and intend to be published try and take your readers into your new dimension with the intention of keeping them awake or at least stimulating some exciting dreams in their nocturnal shutdown. Stimulate their imagination by using your own creative and new themes not the old and obvious.
If you must stick to a formula, at least pop in a few surprises here and there. Take a leaf from “No Second Chance”, when the hero boldly states, “Always expect the unexpected because the unexpected is only the expected when you least expect it.” If you keep that in mind, you may still write one of the best science fiction books.
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