Sci-fi Genre (Middle years)

Sci-fi report (with bonus comedy)

As strange as it might sound, when you’re writing science fiction, fantasy, or any other type of speculative fiction, it should start with realism. This helps your reader to accept the amazing world, characters and tech you’re presenting. 

This next snippet applies a report style to sci-fi make believe, to make it sound real and factual. It also starts with something we understand (beliefs) and twists it in an absurd alien direction. It’s a fun combination!

Writing tip: it's best to use passive tense to create the report effect.

The story so far:
 
In the beginning the Universe was created.
 
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
 
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
 
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe(1980)

Beliefs aside, it’s nice to know that aliens use handkerchiefs and deodorant. :-)

A family in spacesuits on Mars.

Here’s an example using the picture as a starting point.

Mars is known as the red planet to everyone except those who live there. 

It can be an obvious nickname to outsiders. To them, the planet has red soil, red rocks, red dust, and a red sky. However, any tourist remarking about it in those terms will usually find themselves on the receiving end of abuse from locals. 

Martians identify 1,128 different colours that exist on their landscape. To them, calling all of them ‘red’ is like saying that all food tastes like chicken, or that everyone from Venus has eighteen legs. As Martian holiday resorts are considered some of the most luxurious in the system, PlanetAdvisor Magazine recommends that interplanetary travellers “learn some of the language, ask if unsure, and lose the ‘r’ word altogether”. 

The only species more particular than Martians about colour names are graphic designers. They should be avoided at all costs.

Your turn now. You could make your writing sound like an encyclopaedia entry like the snippet, a travel brochure like the example, or come up with your own reporting style.

Don’t sweat too much on making your passage side-splitting comedy. Simply making a factual-sounding report explaining something alien should be absurd enough to make it fun!

Write a small ‘factual’ report based on the picture. It could explain alien behaviour in human terms, or human behaviour in alien terms.
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