Science Fiction Writing Guide

I've been interested in space travel since watching Apollo 10 circle the moon the spring of 1969. Somehow as a child I always thought we'd have a space station and lunar base by the early 1980s with man on Mars within the decade of that; I envisioned myself as a spacecraft pilot, ferrying passengers to and fro between Luna, Mars and the asteroid belt. But shortsightedness and a general ignorance of science have left our space program years behind where it should be, and I resigned myself to exploring the universe via H.G. Wells and "Star Trek."

These days I run an editing business in Hudson, Wis., one of the nation's most beautiful communities. It is a fulfilling and rewarding job, but on a clear night gazing across the river valley's skies, the stars still beckon. This site is a serious examination of how to write science fiction, which appears to be the only way I and many others ever will "reach" the stars. Hopefully, this site will inspire others to pen such adventures so that today's child, gazing at the night sky and dreaming of adventures amid the stars will strive as an adult to make such journeys are reality.

This site's name comes from science fiction author J.G. Ballard's introduction to "Crash": "We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass-merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality." That's very much what this site is about: Inventing reality.

Read my resume.

See published books I've authored.

To Kieran, who even as an infant wanted to "see what trouble Captain Kirk has gotten himself into today." I love you.