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Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

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Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#41

Post by Wohlf »

thefalcon wrote: post #34
dctoedt wrote: post #27

My wife watches police "procedural" stories (Law & Order, CSI, NCIS, etc.). I've long thought that some of their plot lines would make for interesting "what if" training cases for real cops.

Aren't something approaching 100% of those stories pulled from the headlines? (Not disagreeing with you that they would also make good training cases.)

Law and Order certainly pulls a lot from real cases, but it's not that high of a percentage. I'm sure many are inspired by multiple cases mixed together but most murders are pretty boring by fiction standards.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#42

Post by divbit »

I honestly don't care if there is a "sinister" purpose behind the good scifi I've read. Fund the next Iain banks please. In fact - throw me $50k to live for a year and you've got yourself a book - or I can at least guarantee some words on pages mentioning spaceships / robots, etc.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#45

Post by brandonmenc »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #43

I do something similar. I pay writers to write me sci-fi and fantasy stories based on my prompts! It allows me to read what I want to read!

Interesting. Could you provide more details? Things like cost, etc

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#46

Post by r00fus »

elorant wrote: post #44

And destroyed the Greek economy. Which speaks volumes about his competence as an economist.

That's a bit rich. He advocated retreating from the Euro when Greece essentially had obligations that it could never repay (obligations created by a corrupt previous government that arguably were unconscionable).

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#47

Post by arnioxux »

runevault wrote: post #26

Based on the article about Neil Stephenson that was posted here not long ago I'd been thinking along these lines, didn't realize someone already made a business out of it. Interesting.

Neal Stephenson is working at Magic Leap (an augmented reality company) now. I think it actually makes a lot of sense. If a product manager's main job is to define product vision, this guy has a 25 year head start thinking about it!

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#48

Post by DKnoll »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #43

I do something similar. I pay writers to write me sci-fi and fantasy stories based on my prompts! It allows me to read what I want to read!

That's interesting. Can you give us some examples of plotlines and/or features you've requested, what you pay and the length of the end result?

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#49

Post by detritus »

divbit wrote: post #42

I honestly don't care if there is a "sinister" purpose behind the good scifi I've read. Fund the next Iain banks please. In fact - throw me $50k to live for a year and you've got yourself a book - or I can at least guarantee some words on pages mentioning spaceships / robots, etc.

Speaking of whom - a friend and I were the other day wondering Just Why On Earth none of his SciFi appears to have been optioned for conversion to other media. I can imagine scope, complexity and presumably huge budget leaving prospective optioners with slightly soiled breeks, but all the same — not even a hope of one of the tales in The State of the Art?

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#50

Post by Retric »

fundabulousrIII wrote: post #22

Congrats. The .mil & .biz folks have been acknowledged in what has been implicit in every advancement I've seen in the last 40 years. sci-fi pop fiction postulation and conjecture based on the science community brain trust. Most of these guys were consultants or engineers anyway and empowered to write. There are iconoclasts like Ellison and the visionaries but the hard science guys always get paid for their visions.

IMO, Science fiction is less about new ideas as it is spreading those ideas to a wider audience. The average NASA scientist may come up with an interesting idea, but unless it's directly relevant within a decade few people are going to hear about it.
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