{"id":8510,"date":"2013-04-29T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8510"},"modified":"2013-04-29T19:32:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T01:32:12","slug":"y-is-for-yesteryear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/y-is-for-yesteryear\/","title":{"rendered":"Y is for Yesteryear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Star_wars_old\"<\/a>They say that the golden age of science fiction is about twelve years old.\u00a0 That’s definitely true for me.<\/p>\n

My first exposure to the genre was Star Wars: A New Hope.\u00a0 I saw it when I was seven, right around the height of my dinosaur phase.\u00a0 Everything about the movie completely blew me away, from the Jawas and Sand People of Tatooine to the stormtrooper gunfights and lightsaber duels.\u00a0 After watching Luke blow up the Death Star, I spent the next few hours running around the yard pretending to fly my own starfighter.<\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, I’ve never really stopped.<\/p>\n

My parents made me wait until I was nine to watch The Empire Strikes back, because it was rated PG.\u00a0 Without any exaggeration, I can say that those were the longest two years of my life.\u00a0 I was literally counting down days by the end, and to pass the time without going crazy, I read up on all the books about space that I could possibly find.<\/p>\n

My father bought the original X-wing flight simulator game somewhere around then, and I soon became totally engrossed in it.\u00a0 Since the 386 was our only entertainment system (no Super Nintendo–I had to visit a friend’s house for that), X-wing became the defining game of my childhood.\u00a0 I spent hours and hours on that game, to the point where I knew exactly which simulated missions the characters from the books were flying and how to complete them faster and easier.<\/p>\n

I thought The Empire Strikes Back was a little slow the first time I saw it, but it’s since grown on me, to the point where now it’s my favorite film in the whole series.\u00a0 Thankfully, my parents let me watch Return of the Jedi the next day, and for the next few months my life felt utterly complete.<\/p>\n

Around this time I discovered the Star Wars novels and soon immersed myself in them.\u00a0 The Courtship of Princess Leia<\/em> by Dave Wolverton soon became one of my favorites, as well as the Heir to the Empire<\/em> trilogy by Timothy Zahn and the X-wing<\/em> series by Michael A. Stackpole.<\/p>\n

But it was Roger Allen McBride who first introduced me to a different flavor of science fiction with his Corellia<\/em> trilogy.\u00a0 As I mentioned in V is for Vast<\/a>, those books had just enough of a touch of hard science to intrigue me about the other possibilities of the genre.\u00a0 That was the last Star Wars series that I read before branching out into other works of science fiction.<\/p>\n

The Tripod<\/em> trilogy by John Christopher was my first introduction to the dystopian \/ post-apocalyptic genre, depicting an enslaved humanity after an alien invasion.\u00a0 Those books really captured my imagination for a while.\u00a0 The Giver<\/em> was also quite interesting and thought provoking, though since it didn’t involve spaceships or aliens it wasn’t nearly as compelling.<\/p>\n

I read a lot of fantasy in my early high school years, including Tracy Hickman, Lloyd Alexander, and (of course) J.R.R. Tolkien.\u00a0 While I enjoyed those books and immersed myself in them for a while, my true love was still science fiction.\u00a0 For almost a year, I watched Star Trek: Voyager religiously with my dad.\u00a0 And every now and again, I’d pick out a science fiction book from the local town library and give it a try.\u00a0 That’s how I discovered Frank Herbert’s Dune.<\/em><\/p>\n

In eleventh grade, my English teacher had us choose an author and focus our term papers solely on their books for the entire year.\u00a0 She suggested I choose Orson Scott Card, but I chose Cormac McCarthy instead.\u00a0 I’m not sure if that was the worst decision of my high school career, or the best decision, since assigned high school reading tends to make any book feel like it sucks.\u00a0 I discovered Ender’s Game<\/em> the following summer, and finished it in a delirious rush at 3am the morning after checking it out from the local library.<\/p>\n

More than any other book,\u00a0Ender’s Game<\/em> cemented my love for the genre, and showed me just how powerful and moving the genre could be.\u00a0 It opened so many insights into the world and human nature, reading that book made me feel like I’d opened a pair of eyes that I didn’t even know I’d had.\u00a0 Looking back, that was probably the moment when I knew I would be a science fiction writer.\u00a0 I’d known I was going to be a writer ever since I read A Wrinkle in Time<\/em> at age eight, but to be a science fiction writer specifically, that goal was probably cemented by reading Orson Scott Card.<\/p>\n

After high school, I served a two year mission for my church, during which I didn’t read any novels or watch any TV or movies.\u00a0 When I came back, though, Orson Scott Card and Madeline L’Engle helped me to ease through the awkwardness of adjusting back to normal civilian life.\u00a0 When I left for college, I expanded my horizons even further, starting with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation<\/em> series and Edgar Rice Burrough’s Princess of Mars.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I discovered Pioneer Books in downtown Provo, I knew I’d found my favorite bookstore in Utah Valley.\u00a0 I have so many fond memories sitting cross-legged on the floor in the science fiction section, browsing through the musty used books for hours at a time.\u00a0 That’s where I discovered C.J. Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, and numerous other authors who are among my favorites today.<\/p>\n

When I discovered Spin,<\/em> Robert Charles Wilson soon became one of my favorites.\u00a0 I picked up that novel as a free PDF from Tor<\/a>, and read it over the summer while studying abroad in Jordan.\u00a0 Once again, that same hard sf sensibility I’d gotten from Roger Allen McBride touched me in an unforgettable way.\u00a0 But it was the human element of that book that really moved me–in fact, it’s always been about the human element.\u00a0 The world building in Downbelow Station<\/em> was great and all, but the romance of Merchanter’s Luck<\/em> had a much more lasting impact. \u00a0Starship Troopers<\/em> had some good ideas, but it was Mandella’s personal journey in The Forever War<\/em> that moved me almost to tears.\u00a0 The intrigue of the Ender’s Shadow<\/em> series was quite entertaining, but it was Ender’s Game<\/em> and Speaker for the Dead<\/em> that really taught me what it means to be human.<\/p>\n

I finished my first novel,\u00a0Genesis Earth<\/strong>, shortly after returning from that study abroad, and tried to capture the same sensibility from Spin<\/em> as well as the intimately human element.\u00a0 Since then, I’ve written several more sci-fi novels, some of them tragic, some triumphant, but in all of them I’ve tried to get as close as I can to the personal lives of the characters.\u00a0 I don’t know if I’ll ever write a character portrait so intimate as Shevek’s in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed,<\/em> but I certainly hope to someday.<\/p>\n

For me, science fiction started out as a wonderfully exciting entertainment and turned into something much more meaningful.\u00a0 If there’s anything the genre has taught me, though, it’s that the two aren’t mutually exclusive–that you can have your adventure and learn what it means to be human as well.\u00a0 Indeed, the more imaginative the adventure, the greater the truths I’ve taken from it.<\/p>\n

Because of that, even though I’m almost in my thirties now, I can’t possibly foresee a time when science fiction isn’t a major part of my life.\u00a0 It’s a love affair that’s grown just as much as I have, and continues to grow with each new author I discover and each new book I write.\u00a0 When I’m old and grizzled and pushing eighty, I’m sure there will still be a part of that twelve year old boy in me, still running around the yard flying his starship.<\/p>\n

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