Other background notes for A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse…
Last week you read some of the physics background for my new sci-fi rom-com. In this article, I consider some other reasons for writing it.
Maybe I’m too serious, but I have trouble writing humor. There’s some in my novels—humor is part of the human experience, after all. And I can be ironic, biting, wry, and cynical, from short stories to novels, but it’s hard for me to sustain a long, humorous story. There are no novels with a comedic flavor, only some short fiction…until now.
They say humor is the hardest thing to do on stage. If it’s like writing a humorous novel, I can understand that. Maybe my problem is I don’t want or like slapstick, food fights, or absurd, sexual situations. I want a story with a serious foundation with a frothy, humorous coating, something like a serious cup of Colombian coffee with a dash of Jameson whiskey and a whipped cream smiley on top.
Author Hiaasen seems to have mastered this kind of story. In Skinny Dip, for example, a husband tries to murder his wife by pushing her overboard on an ocean cruise. Not funny per se, but the wife’s revenge is funny as hell. That combines humor (maybe black humor?) with mystery—or call it a humorous thriller. I like Hiaasen’s writing all the more because I can’t do it! At least not for mysteries and crime stories. The latter are serious business.
So I thought I might try some humorous sci-fi. The characters in my short story “The Apprentice” were good ones. (You can find it in “Steve’s Shorts” category of this blog, or in the collection Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, Volume Two—see the list of free PDF downloads on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page of my website.) I first had to figure out more of the science—that old dentist’s chair was a bit too limited, considering where the short story ended. I needed to make the male protagonist a better foil for the female too. Then came the critical question: Can I sustain the humor?
I’m always looking to try something new. I still don’t know if I can do sustained humor—you’ll have to determine that with my new book—but I wanted to try that before romance or erotica because I’m certain I can’t write in those genres. (Ironically this novel turned into a sci-fi rom-com because it’s s ribald romance at times.) But who knows? The question I always ask myself: Is there a good story to be had that might entertain my readers? That’s what it’s all about!
So this novel was an experiment…and writing it was fun as well. Some readers might interpret it as lampooning our moneyed, political, and military classes, or even scientists, who often take themselves far too seriously (I know, because I once was one)—maybe that’s the Irish in me (à la Jonathon Swift). There is some of that, of course. But I wrote it mostly to have fun and try to write something humorous about time travel. I even thought about giving it away, but hell, at the risk of appearing immodest, not many sci-fi authors could write this novel.
Any poking fun at time-travel romances that diminish both the sci-fi and romance genres is intentional, of course. These are ubiquitous both in books and on streaming video, and they never mention anything as profound as the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics,” if there’s anything at all profound to be found in such stories. I wouldn’t expect to find anything like my main characters’ social commentary either. So, call this novel what you want—romance, sci-fi, humor, road trip, or social commentary—it doesn’t matter as long as you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
The best comedy hides serious themes amid the laughs and smiles, of course. I don’t know if I’ve achieved that in this novel, but I tried. The themes are about consequences—the dentist’s chair can only take the principals into the future, after all, so I could analyze the consequences of present policies and decisions, with a couple of exceptions (bows to early hard-boiled mystery and crime stories and to those brave fighters in World War II).
With all the references to comedy and romance, though, a reader might write this novel off as fluff. I don’t write fluff. I’ve partially explained why it’s not in last week’s previous blog article, but let me put it more bluntly: This is still a hard sci-fi novel. Any hope for quantizing general relativity requires quantum histories (in fact, that’s the only way we can reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory in their present forms). Climate change is real (and a clear and present danger for all human beings). Robots, androids, and AI already exist. Long-haul starships are obviously more likely than Star Trek’s warp drives. And so forth. All these are considered in the novel
In fact, I certainly expect this novel will also entertain those who know more than a bit of science and respect the scientific method more than those who are anti-science and blame science for all the world’s problems, including theirs. The first group has many members who are fans of hard sci-fi; I’m not sure about the second group.
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Comments are always welcome.
A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Enrico Fermi wasn’t the last physicist who was both an experimental and theoretical genius, but Professor Gail Hoff will never receive the Nobel Prize. She wants to travel through time but discovers she can only go forward. She goes time-traveling through several universes of the multiverse, never to return to her little lab outside Philly. Jeff Langley, her jack-of-all-trades electronics wizard, accompanies her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous, make this sci-fi rom-com a far-out road-trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounter, robots and androids—all that and more await the reader who rides along. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
