Reading To Support Goals

At the end of January, I made an adjustment to this year's goals and objectives "Research and create notes for a happy apocalyptic story." I read Pandemic 1918 by Catharine Arnold and Pale Rider by Laura Spinney to research that story, but I'm also trying to read some general science fiction to ground myself in the genre I'm writing. (I also have an adult first contact story that I'm holding on to for a little while before I submit it again, so grounding myself in the genre would be good for that, too.) So late this winter/early this spring I read Lock In and Head On by John Scalzi. (I read his Redshirts a few years ago, and I believe we have his Agent to the Stars floating around the house somewhere.)

Lock In and Head On are police procedurals set in the near future, using the same main characters and same world. To be truthful, I found the science a little long in places and hard to follow, and there were a lot of secondary characters, particularly of the potential bad guy variety. I loved the main characters and their world, though, enjoyed the reads, and hope Scalzi does more Lock In books.

 

How Do Lock In and Head On Fit In To My Grand Scheme?

The Lock In books involve bringing science fiction elements into our world. This is my favorite kind of science fiction. I am not a big fan of stories about human elements entering science fiction worlds. When I write science fiction,which, granted, isn't that often, I bring science fiction to the here and, so far, the now. That's what I did with My Life Among the Aliens and Club Earth, which have the same main characters and world. They involve aliens coming into suburban children's world.

So I'm going to try to stick with that kind of science fiction reading for the immediate future.