Sci-Fi Erotica Writing Advice or Recommendations?

[SimonDoom]

all the graffiti they found excavating Pompeii

What, like " HEY VESUVIUS EAT MY" ??

 

[Comshaw]

Your guiding principle is one of my biggest pet peeves about most of sci-fi stories out there. I hate how practically all of them are just lifting contemporary humans, as they are now, and dropping them in some futuristic settings with interstellar travel and other nigh-miraculous technology. It makes sense zero sense that throughout all that technological progress, there has been practically no change in mentalities and attitudes. Our history is the best evidence how ludicrous that is; just think what was considered average, expected and normal in the society several hundred years ago compared to now.

There have been change, but not much. Let's take War as an example. I said that in 300 to 600 years the wouldn't be much change in "mentalities and attitudes". If we have changed that much, why, just 84 years ago did we have a war that killed more humans than ANY OTHER WAR EVER? And since then we've had a few hundred more. Smaller, yes, but killing people nonetheless. And now? In the 21st century? Four words: Palestine, Israel, Ukraine, Russia. All that "technological progress" has given us a better way of life, but it has also given us better ways to kill each other.

As far as doing away with poverty, the average peasant in the 1600 wasn't starving to death. On the whole, the Lords couldn't let that happen or the income that supported their rich lives would stop. Of course if I look at my neighborhood it appears as though we've gotten a handle on it. But with a wider view, there are still people staring to death in this world. I have no way to prove it, nor will I spend time trying but I believe when you take in the size of the population of the earth, that starvation in this day and age is probably on a par with 500 years ago.

My "favorite" example of this is all the kvetching about the central premise of the movie Passengers, and how it's flying in the face of the contemporary concepts of consent. The fact that main characters belong to a civilization where it's pretty normal to go off to distant star systems by going to decades-long hibernation and leaving behind everyone and everything they known is apparently completely irrelevant to how their morality and sexual mores "should" work

Have you ever read any history? Do you think the Polynesian people's ancestors, when they set out from Asia to the Islands didn't see that vast ocean as the same as the gulf of space that was portrayed in that movie? Humans have been moving, exploring, leaving behind their families and communities for thousands of years. Doing so in space is no different than setting sail on a huge ocean or crossing a mile-thick glacier to find new lands. That drive is coded in our DNA. Move, expand, discover. There are and will always be those who are fiddle-footed, who have to go, have to find new places.

But we did it already, right now! To a first approximation, there is almost no one, even in the developing countries who could be considered "poor" by the standards of 600 years ago. The level of safety you can expect in more developed countries is also pretty much tantamount to crime being nonexistent. Not everything is sunshine and roses, of course, but neither it is so in Star Trek; there's plenty of corruption on many levels of the Federation, for example.

So why are people still starving to death? Just because it's not happening in your backyard, just because it's not someone you know, doesn't mean it isn't happening. This is the downfall of Pollyanna thinking: that if I can't see it, if I can't touch it, if it isn't happening to someone I know then it isn't happening at all. I will repeat what I said earlier, that kind of thing, to do away with war and poverty will take thousands, not hundreds of years.



Comshaw

 

[Areala-chan]

I remember reading somewhere that they've found scrawled Demotic graffiti within the pyramid of Khufu (or possibly in the quarries that the stone was sourced) that that says things like "Pmersh's team are a bunch of donkey fuckers, Phan's team are the best stonemasons"

Also, the greeks were vandals.

Well, that's enough to convince me to hire Phan's team next time I need stone quarried.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

I’m with the ‘people don’t change’ brigade. I’m also onside with ‘don’t explain more than you have to’.
I was an avid reader of SF when I was younger and nothing killed a story like cardboard cut out characters whose only purpose was to operate the tech. Although that was also something that afflicted high fantasy, advanced tech being equivalent to magic and all that.
We write stories about people (or an equivalent entity - see the excellent Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells) and if there isn’t a significant human element then we might as well be describing the workings of a clock.

 

[Voboy]

Are you really finding it so easy to empathize with people who:

• found nothing wrong with the idea of insolvent debtors submitting themselves to lifelong servitude as the today equivalent of a household appliance
• considered it beneficial for very young boys to be on the receiving end of homosexual, pedophilic relationships as part of their upbringing
• saw it as necessary and proper to eliminate the "weak" children, by whatever arbitrary measure, to safeguard the purity and strength of their society?

Uh, no. Which is why I didn't say I empathized with them. No need whatsoever to try to put words into my mouth; I'm more than capable of saying what I mean.

I also said you're entitled to your opinion. I'm not looking to rail about it on the internet. It's perfectly fine if you disagree. You might not like my SF story, though, if you do. Probably ought to avoid my historical pieces too, while you're at it.

I can't see how you could think that extrapolating the same phenomenon centuries into the future wouldn't lead to a world inhabited by radically different people. Most SF works fail to capture this, which is honestly somewhat understandable. They are just contemporary stories, too.

Okay.

Cheers.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I’m with the ‘people don’t change’ brigade. I’m also onside with ‘don’t explain more than you have to’.

People don't change, but societies do.

Kid is reading a bunch of vintage SF at the minute. What really dates it isn't the ignorance of scientific or tech developments of the last 50-70 years, but the cultural norms of the authors. The most obvious example was Heinlein's Door into Summer, where the MMC goes from the present (1960) to the future of 2000. The tech is actually reasonably close to accurate, given microwaves and mobile phones, but the social attitudes! Women are treated as one notch above intelligent pets, blatant classism is the norm. Asimov does a bit better in allowing women to be respected scientists, but characterisation isn't his strong point. Virgin Planet (Poul Andersen) reads like satire in his vision of various women-only societies, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional.

What's accepted behaviour in a society can change incredibly quickly. In my own lifetime we've gone from only children being very unusual to almost a norm, parenting being a time-consuming expectation until at least kids' late teens, middle classes have gone from aspiring to send children to boarding schools from age 8 or 11, to it being culturally taboo. Piercings and tattoos have gone from totally shocking and job-terminating to boring, in just 30 years. Smoking and providing for it went from a public norm to a private activity in about 15 years, while homosexual affection went the other way in a similar timeframe, at least in some cities.

Individuals are still pretty similar, but what's acceptable behaviour or transgressive is totally different.

 

[ronde]

People don't change, but societies do.

Kid is reading a bunch of vintage SF at the minute. What really dates it isn't the ignorance of scientific or tech developments of the last 50-70 years, but the cultural norms of the authors. The most obvious example was Heinlein's Door into Summer, where the MMC goes from the present (1960) to the future of 2000. The tech is actually reasonably close to accurate, given microwaves and mobile phones, but the social attitudes! Women are treated as one notch above intelligent pets, blatant classism is the norm. Asimov does a bit better in allowing women to be respected scientists, but characterisation isn't his strong point. Virgin Planet (Poul Andersen) reads like satire in his vision of various women-only societies, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional.

What's accepted behaviour in a society can change incredibly quickly. In my own lifetime we've gone from only children being very unusual to almost a norm, parenting being a time-consuming expectation until at least kids' late teens, middle classes have gone from aspiring to send children to boarding schools from age 8 or 11, to it being culturally taboo. Piercings and tattoos have gone from totally shocking and job-terminating to boring, in just 30 years. Smoking and providing for it went from a public norm to a private activity in about 15 years, while homosexual affection went the other way in a similar timeframe, at least in some cities.

Individuals are still pretty similar, but what's acceptable behaviour or transgressive is totally different.

People do change over time, but we need to separate knowledge from culture and culture from personality.

As society has progressed, people have gained knowledge about the science that rules our lives and that will continue into the future. We have to remember that only about 160 years ago, doctors had no clue about what caused most diseases and infection. Today, it's rare for someone to die from the diseases that killed as many men during the civil war as battle wounds. A hundred years in the future, doctors will probably look back at 2024 and think we were really ignorant about the causes of cancer, diabetes, and heart problems and how to prevent or treat them.

Culture also changes as you say. Certain moral codes come and go and actions that were once at least taboo if not outright illegal are now considered acceptable. Drug use used to be a criminal offense in most of the US. Today, it's not condoned, but many states have assumed the posture that arresting people for drug use doesn't help them which is probably true. The problem remains though. It's just considered not the taboo it once was.

Basic human personality does not change. In the future there will still be assholes and people too nice for their own good. There will still be men (and women) ready to take on all comers as well as weak men and meek women who are willing to let anyone trample all over them. The "fight or flight" distance won't change because that's an instinct bred into us from the dawn of time as are most other reactions to unexpected stimuli and events.

Any person in the future surprised by a slimy, eight tentacled monster on Planet Xeron will react in exactly the same way any person today would react to seeing a car bearing down on them. They'd try to run. Any woman who feels wronged will still have the same feelings as we do today.

It's important to write characters that reflect both the level of knowledge and the culture of the time while not ignoring the basic human personalities and responses. It's that personality and the quirks and responses that it causes that makes characters seem real to readers.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

Individuals are still pretty similar, but what's acceptable behaviour or transgressive is totally different

That’s true but it’s virtually a cliche that SF tells you more about the time it was written than the future it portrays. And predicting the way society might turn is extremely hard. John Varley was reasonably successful (The Ophiuchi Hotline et al) but ohmigosh my favourite authors (Larry Niven) have dated horribly.
Going back to my initial comment, SF as a genre is now in a very different place from its ‘visionary’ Golden Age, fresh off the springboard of WWII and the Gernsback Continuum. Hard SF has been pushed aside to the annoyance of cis-normative white men (q.v. the Puppies and the Hugo awards) and leading authors are black or female or (clutches pearls) both.
It’s interesting to compare visions of the future with alternate reality. Just because society appears to have become more liberal doesn’t mean that the pendulum won’t swing back the other way. It’s just as easy (The Handmaid’s Tale) possibly even easier, to imagine a society that is more intolerant, more regressive. After all, various countries around the world are trying to do just that.

 

[StillStunned]

I just want to note that this thread has inspired an erotic space horror story.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

I just want to note that this thread has inspired an erotic space horror story.

Oh man! What are the themes?

 

[StillStunned]

Oh man! What are the themes?

Think Alien, but with a soul-sucking shapeshifting sex demon.

Hey, I never said it was going to be profound!

 

[Voboy]

Think Alien, but with a soul-sucking shapeshifting sex demon.

Hey, I never said it was going to be profound!

Facehugger < Facesitter

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

There's some excellent advice here. Some not so much. I say that as someone with over 20 sales in SF and F for actual cashy money. I would start with world building. Don't obsess over it but build the rules of your world. Just make sure that you rubbed the serial numbers off any existing IP. My Penal Slavery universe has a very detailed bible because it's an alt history that diverges when Lee is assassinated at Appomattox by a crazed Union officer. I don't pontificate about it UNLESS IT’S NECESSARY TO THE STORY. Same for technology or how people interact. Depends on your universe and it's rules.

Once you create your universe, write your story. As for authors? CV Walker writes SF romance and does a good job with the technology. Especially compared to a lot of folks in that genre. Monalisa Foster Ravages of Honor can get pretty spicy. Bear in mind most commercial SF and a lot of fantasy tends to shut the bedroom door on those kinds of scenes. But it's your story. Hope that helps.

 

[Voboy]

Bear in mind most commercial SF and a lot of fantasy tends to shut the bedroom door on those kinds of scenes.

When I wrote mine here, I wanted to do the same.

But it's... here. At Literotica. SF, as a category, tolerates fuckscenes that are MUCH less graphic than most other categories, but I think it's unwise to leave them out completely here.

 

[StillStunned]

Once you create your universe, write your story. As for authors? CV Walker writes SF romance and does a good job with the technology. Especially compared to a lot of folks in that genre. Monalisa Foster Ravages of Honor can get pretty spicy. Bear in mind most commercial SF and a lot of fantasy tends to shut the bedroom door on those kinds of scenes. But it's your story. Hope that helps.

The Seer King trilogy by Chris Bunch (fantasy, not sci-fi) has some pretty explicit scenes throughout. It made me realise I don't like explicit sex in my mainstream fantasy.

But here on Lit? This is where you can go crazy, get really imaginative. Vampires, tentacled demons, zero-G sex, six-breasted cat-women. All the fun stuff.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

Well, you're all welcome to judge my attempts at world building and such. My latest offering (Uninvited Guests) is up as of about ten hours ago.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

When I wrote mine here, I wanted to do the same.

But it's... here. At Literotica. SF, as a category, tolerates fuckscenes that are MUCH less graphic than most other categories, but I think it's unwise to leave them out completely here.

Oh absolutely. I had my commercial hat on. If it's being posted here, you definitely leave the bedroom door open.

 

[Codoc24]

You don't say how familiar you are with sci-fi, but it would be good to use terms that are commonly accepted rather than make up new ones and then have to explain what they are. Whether you like the term or not, I think just about everyone knows what "warp drive" is. Below is a list that I pulled up with a quick Google search. I don't know how exhaustive the list is, I barely looked at it. I just brought it up as an example.

https://www.sciencefictionideas.com/400-science-fiction-terms-to-help-you-write-better-sci-fi/