Hardest Fantasy Themes to Write

[KittyOfSteele]

Counterpoint; if you acknowledge Lovecraft’s impact, lean into it. My "Confession" series is shamelessly shaped by Lovecraft. The third story is where I stop even trying to be subtle about it.

I think you misunderstood my point. I do not want to lean into Lovecraft because I'm sick of it. Remember when all fantasy stories leaned into Tolkien until The Colour of Magic finally did something different? That's what Terry Pratchett meant when he talked about Tolkien being Mt. Fuji. Lovecraft is the Mt. Fuji of cosmic horror.

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

I think you misunderstood my point. I do not want to lean into Lovecraft because I'm sick of it. Remember when all fantasy stories leaned into Tolkien until The Colour of Magic finally did something different? That's what Terry Pratchett meant when he talked about Tolkien being Mt. Fuji. Lovecraft is the Mt. Fuji of cosmic horror.

Fair enough.
It is hard to leave Mt Fuji out of it.

I am very familiar with Pratchett. The case could be made that he is replacing Tolkien, but Pratchett embodied the principles of "Steal Like an Artist". He stole widely and well.

Have you read any of the pre-Christian Irish mythology? The Tuatha Dé Danann might provide some inspiration.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Anything where the magic or science is this great unlimited thing and/or characters and their abilities are seemingly without limit or at least without definition. TV or movies where a character can just pull a brand new rabbit from their hat to fit a particular plot need drives me insane and as I got older comic books pissed me off more and more because of it.
I've done fantasy and sci-fi and the science and magic within those stories are limited in scope because the characters are the story.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think setting a story in the future is inherently difficult, because none of us knows what the future really will be like. You have to give it some thought and pay some attention to the world-building to make it seem realistic enough.

The less "hard" and more "fantasy" the science, the easier it is to write, I think.

For instance, with respect to time travel, especially backwards time travel, stories tend to gloss over the "how," because, well, as far as we can tell it's impossible, so there's no point in trying to contrive something "plausible" to make it happen. The reader or moviegoer is accustomed to accepting magic (e.g., the flux capacitor in Back to the Future). But if it's hard science fiction, like, say, The Martian, then it's really important to work out the details.

The "solution" at that point is going far enough into the future that you aren't extrapolating existing technology.

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

Anything where the magic or science is this great unlimited thing and/or characters and their abilities are seemingly without limit or at least without definition. TV or movies where a character can just pull a brand new rabbit from their hat to fit a particular plot need drives me insane and as I got older comic books pissed me off more and more because of it.
I've done fantasy and sci-fi and the science and magic within those stories are limited in scope because the characters are the story.

I liked Pratchett's guiding principle of magic.
Magic always exacts a price and it is usually too high.

The approach that seems to work for sci-fi is to focus on how technology impacts humans and how humans and human relationships are shaped and reshaped by technology.

"The Expanse" was great for this, as was "Andor". "Dune" is an interesting case as Herbert lifted a lot of material from "Sabres of Paradise", a heavily romanticized account of a leader from the Caucasus region.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I'd argue that a time loop story like Groundhog day is the easiest sort of time travel to write.

You never have to worry about any of the "changes to the timeline" stuff because you never see any of that.
You punched Ned Ryerson in the face and he ended up in the hospital instead of driving down Park Avenue at 11:37am when an out of control city bus was supposed to rear end his car and come to a stop. Instead it barreled through Myers Park and killed young Sean Duffy who would have grown up to cure cancer.

 

[SimonDoom]

The "solution" at that point is going far enough into the future that you aren't extrapolating existing technology.

Kind of what "Dune" did. It's supposed to be thousands of years in the future, but they've gotten rid of computers and much of the world seems medieval. But it seems to work.

The problem with near-future sci fi, like 2001:A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner, is that it almost always predicts wrong.

A seemingly permanent flaw of futurism is the overconfident belief in the imminence of flying cars.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Kind of what "Dune" did. It's supposed to be thousands of years in the future, but they've gotten rid of computers and much of the world seems medieval. But it seems to work.

The problem with near-future sci fi, like 2001:A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner, is that it almost always predicts wrong.

A seemingly permanent flaw of futurism is the overconfident belief in the imminence of flying cars.

Agreed. And with near future settings your audience will likely live to see that year. Escape from New York was supposed to be 1997.

 

[StillStunned]

Somehow, I don’t think that's true.

Thanks, but it's true. If I have to put too much thought into the plot, I lose interest and never finish writing.

 

[SimonDoom]

Agreed. And with near future settings your audience will likely live to see that year. Escape from New York was supposed to be 1997.

I had forgotten about that. And the TV show Space:1999 was set, obviously, in 1999. When it was made I'm sure people thought we'd be on the moon soon but we haven't been back yet, and it's 2025.

It's interesting to see what is underpredicted and overpredicted in terms of futurism. For instance, travel technology is always overpredicted. We still don't have practical flying cars. We're not much closer to figuring out how to explore much of space than before.

But on the other hand, information technology and computer technology has been somewhat underpredicted. The Internet has changed the world very quickly, in ways most people didn't anticipate.

Exaggerated dystopianism is popular. Like Blade Runner. I've always thought a dystopian future is unrealistic and unlikely, for the simple reason . . . people don't want to live like that. Consider Blade Runner and its prediction of the environment in LA in 2019. Actually, LA has better air quality today than it did when Blade Runner was made. It makes sense, though. Dystopianism is better for story-telling. If the future is hunky dory there's nothing to tell a story about.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I don't think any fantasy theme is innately harder to write than others. But I do think that difficulty goes up with the scope and size of the story.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'd argue that a time loop story like Groundhog day is the easiest sort of time travel to write.

You never have to worry about any of the "changes to the timeline" stuff because you never see any of that.
You punched Ned Ryerson in the face and he ended up in the hospital instead of driving down Park Avenue at 11:37am when an out of control city bus was supposed to rear end his car and come to a stop. Instead it barreled through Myers Park and killed young Sean Duffy who would have grown up to cure cancer.

The beauty of Groundhog Day is that the "magic" is never explained, and somehow as a moviegoer you never care.

The Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow has a similar time loop concept, but with an explanation that involves the aliens. I think it pretty much works.

One of the coolest time loop movies, IMO, was Source Code, with Jake Gyllenhaal. I'm not going to say more because it would give too much away, but I recommend it.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I had forgotten about that. And the TV show Space:1999 was set, obviously, in 1999. When it was made I'm sure people thought we'd be on the moon soon but we haven't been back yet, and it's 2025.

It's interesting to see what is underpredicted and overpredicted in terms of futurism. For instance, travel technology is always overpredicted. We still don't have practical flying cars. We're not much closer to figuring out how to explore much of space than before.

But on the other hand, information technology and computer technology has been somewhat underpredicted. The Internet has changed the world very quickly, in ways most people didn't anticipate.

Exaggerated dystopianism is popular. Like Blade Runner. I've always thought a dystopian future is unrealistic and unlikely, for the simple reason . . . people don't want to live like that. Consider Blade Runner and its prediction of the environment in LA in 2019. Actually, LA has better air quality today than it did when Blade Runner was made. It makes sense, though. Dystopianism is better for story-telling. If the future is hunky dory there's nothing to tell a story about.

Dystopian = problems, which means tons of easy conflict.
Reading 50s and 60s Sci-fi is always interesting, how they completely missed computers. Heinlein has characters travelling to other planets with slide rules. It actually inspired me to learn to use one. (Bought one, but still haven't learned, don't judge me ).

Over estimating travel is also helpful from a fiction standpoint because it opens up new worlds. Literally. Long distance travel is boring. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark when he "travels by map" in the real world that would have been a bone jarring, exhausting trip. The drone of those radial engines for DAYS.
Any tech that can hand wave that away is pure win.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The beauty of Groundhog Day is that the "magic" is never explained, and somehow as a moviegoer you never care.

The Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow has a similar time loop concept, but with an explanation that involves the aliens. I think it pretty much works.

One of the coolest time loop movies, IMO, was Source Code, with Jake Gyllenhaal. I'm not going to say more because it would give too much away, but I recommend it.

I think (and I've never tried) that they would be the easiest to write, but the hardest to come up with a good "Hook" that the audience would care about.

Edge of Tomorrow was great!

 

[lovecraft68]

I think (and I've never tried) that they would be the easiest to write, but the hardest to come up with a good "Hook" that the audience would care about.

Edge of Tomorrow was great!

There's an episode of Supernatural that featured Sam reliving the same morning over and over. In the end it turned out Loki was behind it, but it was one of the humorous style episodes and a lot of fun.

 

[StillStunned]

It's interesting to see what is underpredicted and overpredicted in terms of futurism. For instance, travel technology is always overpredicted. We still don't have practical flying cars. We're not much closer to figuring out how to explore much of space than before.

But on the other hand, information technology and computer technology has been somewhat underpredicted. The Internet has changed the world very quickly, in ways most people didn't anticipate.

I still have a book from when I was small called The Usborne Book of the Future, from 1979. It predicts what the world would look like in the year 2000. Plenty was wrong - like you say, travel technology and space exploration. It has us living under the sea and using dolphins as sheepdogs, for instance.

But it also got a lot right. Flatscreen televisions, mobile phone technology, medical technology, clean(ish) cities.

In the late 1990s, I spent some time working for technology consultants. Their job was to track technologies around the world and advise companies and governments on promising areas to invest in, warn them which countries were making advancements and where, and so on. Fascinating reports to read, and very comforting to know that there was actually some thought going into that kind of thing.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

The approach that seems to work for sci-fi is to focus on how technology impacts humans and how humans and human relationships are shaped and reshaped by technology.

This is what Cyberpunk is about, yet many people took the wrong lessons from it and put it down into the cliche of Dystopian Fiction, but with cool gadgets and evil corporations replacing the strawmen of political systems. I mostly blame The Matrix and the Cyberpunk TTRPG for the cliches, but then again, people took the wrong lessons from those too.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think AI is going to be the next big Sci-Fi Mt Fuji. Either AI will be ubiquitous in a Sci-Fi future or you will have to have explain it's absence.
I have a WiP where the people going out on an exploration mission ask why not just send an AI probe of some sort.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think AI is going to be the next big Sci-Fi Mt Fuji.

I think it always has been. Between 2001, Alien, Bladerunner, I, Robot and Terminator, it's the AI that is the monster of our own creation. Frankenstein's modern Prometheus taken to the greatest degree possible. I hope and pray that our scientists are seeing these stories as cautionary tales of just because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should. For it may be our undoing as a species.

 

[DEFCOM5]

One of the coolest time loop movies, IMO, was Source Code, with Jake Gyllenhaal. I'm not going to say more because it would give too much away, but I recommend it.

Source code is a fabulous movie!

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think it always has been. Between 2001, Alien, Bladerunner, I, Robot and Terminator, it's the AI that is the monster of our own creation. Frankenstein's modern Prometheus taken to the greatest degree possible. I hope and pray that our scientists are seeing these stories as cautionary tales of just because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should. For it may be our undoing as a species.

But there is a ton of sci-fi where it isn't a factor or even acknowledged. That's the part that will change.

 

[Djmac1031]

The hardest task i ever set for myself while writing the climactic third part in the Angels And Demons Saga, a fantasy universe co-created and shared with @EmilyMiller was coming up with my own spin on the origins of God, The Devil, Heaven, Hell and the universe.

Yeah, I know. What the hell was i thinking?

 

[EmilyMiller]

The hardest task i ever set for myself while writing the climactic third part in Angels And Demons Saga, a fantasy universe co-created and shared with @EmilyMiller was coming up with my own spin on the origins of God, The Devil, Heaven, Hell and the universe.

Yeah, I know. What the hell was i thinking?

And you knocked it out of the park, hun

 

[StillStunned]

Red Dwarf had some great takes on AI. Like Holly, the ship's computer with an IQ of 6000, but in later series he/she suffers from computer senility. Or the concept of Silicon Heaven (and Hell). And the insane AI called Legion. And Kryten trying to break his programming so that he can lie and insult.

As matters stand, I'd like to see a story where the AI screws up all the time. Sends the spaceship to the wrong space coordinates, because it got the maths wrong. And then refuses to admit there's anything wrong.

"Computer, we're supposed to have emerged from hyperspace by Apollyon IIC. There's nothing here. Where are we?"
"That's an excellent question! According to your instructions, you wanted to journey to Apollyon IIC. We've arrived."
"There's nothing there. You've taken us to the wrong place. We're in the middle of empty space!"
"You make a very good point. I calculated the journey to Apollyon IIC. We've arrived."
"Computer, what are our odds of survival if I take an axe to your mainframe?"
"That's an excellent question..."

 

[Bamagan]

Red Dwarf had some great takes on AI. Like Holly, the ship's computer with an IQ of 6000, but in later series he/she suffers from computer senility. Or the concept of Silicon Heaven (and Hell). And the insane AI called Legion. And Kryten trying to break his programming so that he can lie and insult.

As matters stand, I'd like to see a story where the AI screws up all the time. Sends the spaceship to the wrong space coordinates, because it got the maths wrong. And then refuses to admit there's anything wrong.

"Computer, we're supposed to have emerged from hyperspace by Apollyon IIC. There's nothing here. Where are we?"
"That's an excellent question! According to your instructions, you wanted to journey to Apollyon IIC. We've arrived."
"There's nothing there. You've taken us to the wrong place. We're in the middle of empty space!"
"You make a very good point. I calculated the journey to Apollyon IIC. We've arrived."
"Computer, what are our odds of survival if I take an axe to your mainframe?"
"That's an excellent question..."

That sounds like the computer on the Heart of Gold, trying to make Arthur Dent some tea.