This sabbatical was about writing a Science Fiction short story with a given topic. I feel that this sabbatical has helped me gained more interest in Science Fiction. Originally, I did not have much interest in Science Fiction and I barely read any Science Ficiton books. However, through this sabbatical, I gained interest in this topic and even learnt how to write Science Fiction. They gave a few Science Fiction short stories to read on. I feel that "Skittles for Callisto" was the best out of all. It talked about cultural prejudice between Martian-humans and Earth-humans, however, they eventually made up. I initially thought Science Ficiton was just about new and advanced technologies, about super suits and speedy robots. However, this story has changed my view on Science Fiction.
I also learnt about various mistakes made in Science Fiction. One of the major ones is the "info dump", where all the information is dumped right into the story and the author expects the reader to read all of that yet make no progress into the story. It is one of the main things that makes the story boring, and makes the reader not want to read on. Also, another mistake that is common is fuzz, where the author uses "Somehow" to cover up things he finds troublesome to explain.
One of the main things to take note of in Science Fiction writing is worldbuilding, building an imaginery world, the future world. It MUST be believable. The climate, geology and physics must be consistent with what we know of the universe [no super flying humans or shooting lasers from eyes, unless there is a scientific explanation, e.g mutation of genes, etc.] Also, there must be a theme, a broad idea of what the story is about. In "Skittles for Callisto", the theme is cultural prejudice. Themes can be a message about life, society or human relations and nature.
We were supposed to write a short story on a future scene on a given topic. In this case, I got "Healthy Living".
I'm eager to see if my story turns out good :)
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