When all things are said and done, if I am only able to accomplish one thing with Zara Thibideaux, it is this. It is that I elicited a good laugh from the reader. ...or at the very least a snort, chuckle or groan...
Granted, the Zara stories are fully intended to be medium-firm science fiction, they are still stories dealing with the human condition and lets face it. We all have plenty of cold, unpleasant reality in our lives, so why burden our down time by fictionalizing more of it?
No, I’d rather take the sound scientific principles that I wish to incorporate into my stories, extrapolate them into their future potential, then firmly disguise them in my decidedly Douglas Adams-Monty Pythonesque sense of the absurd. Though it is not to say that I wish to wrap a slice of lemon about a gold brick and then beat the reader with it. Nay, I’d rather tend to the more subtle approach
Take quantum mechanics as an example. This is not a topic generally known to make the comedy circuits and if you are trying to pitch it to a bunch of pre and early teen readers…. Well it is probably a hard sell even in the best of circumstances…. Or is it?
It is amazing what one can come up with on a daily commute, despite the insistence of other drivers that you really pay attention to what you are doing at 70+ish miles per hour.
....here is a small teaser of what I came up with. If you want to see the rest of it, well you need to be my agent, publisher or guinea pig….. your choice.
[ “Been working on an experiment,” The boy commented as he noticed Zara’s stare.
“Excellent,” Zara was immediately interested. “What kind?”
“I am trying to achieve a sustained state of quantum uncertainty,” The boy was grinning in obvious pride, or it might have been in reaction to whatever it was he had just eaten. The only thing certain about school lunches were that they were organic and theoretically weren’t designed to kill you. ]
...skipping a bit….
[“Oh,” Zara replied. “How did it work out?”
“Not so good,” Dink shook his head sadly as he looked at the scratches on his hands, “But I think I know where I went wrong.”
“The part where you stole your neighbor’s cat and strapped toast to it’s back?” Zara suggested. ]
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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