Sci-Fi is just the surface

Too often, people say they do not like science fiction.

Because it is too technical.
Because there are too many wars, too many spaceships, too many droids.

Because it is for children.

Because it is not serious enough to be good literature, good cinema, or a good graphic novel.

But people once said the same thing about comics.

What those who dismiss science fiction often forget is to look beneath its surface.

Science fiction is an environment. A stage. No different from a city, a forest, or the countryside. No different from a story set in the present or the distant past.

Good science fiction goes beyond that environment.

It has recognizable characters.
It tells meaningful stories.
And often, it contains many layers.

That is also what I try to do in my own stories.

They may look simple.
They may look like science fiction.

Take The Continuum, for instance.

Of course, there is world-building. There are spaceships, droids, unfamiliar worlds and forbidden technologies. Everything takes place in a reality that does not exist.

But true stories always return to the essentials.

The Continuum is not really about worlds at war, aliens fighting, or strange experiments.

It is about a father who cannot find a way to live with the loss of his daughter.

First, his daughter became ill. Then her mother refused treatment because it conflicted with her religious beliefs.

Max left his wife.

And he left his daughter.

Then his daughter died.

Guilt entered the story.
Guilt and drinking.

And Max ran away.

From his job.
From his family.
From himself.

He travelled to unknown and forbidden places, where he encountered technologies that were never meant to be used.

And hope returned.

The hope that he might see his daughter again.

Until that hope failed him too.

In the end, Max had to accept the unacceptable: his daughter was gone. She would never return. She would live on only as a memory.

It is an old story.

A story about an ancient kind of pain. About trying to escape it, learning to live with it, and finally finding some measure of peace.

Science fiction is more than technology, spectacular battles and vast cinematic landscapes.

Its real power often lies in the subtle things.

The details.
The silences.
The tiny moments.