One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a new column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.
This week, we bring you guest author and Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate Adria Laycraft, whose debut novel, Jumpship Hope, came out in August from Tyche Books Ltd!
Tanya Huff, author of the Federation of Valor and the Peacekeeper Series, says, “Jumpship Hope is adventure with heart.” To learn more about what imbued Jumpship Hope with so much heart, hear what Adria has to say…
Space Opera Daydreams
Recently I launched my debut novel, Jumpship Hope, a science fiction story easily placed in the space opera slot. A quick online search of space opera brings up this definition:
“A subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking.”
Adventure is the big draw here, often resulting in fast-paced action scenes and strong character arcs. To me, that is the perfect recipe for entertainment. No matter what themes I may want to explore on both a personal and a worldview level, a feeling of pure adventure is key. Discovering new planets, meeting aliens, making friends in strange places, flying cool spaceships… who wouldn’t want in? But there is a further opportunity writing science fiction offers.
Space opera was a term I did not know until after I joined writer’s groups, took workshops, and attended conventions. Before that, I was just a reader, grabbing for whatever caught my interest. I grew up consuming everything I could find in my school library, my public library, and my small local Coles bookstore, and for all the books I read, a clear love for fantasy and science fiction became obvious. I went from reading Bedknobs and Broomsticks, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Chronicles of Narnia, to devouring The Lord of the Rings in full at eight years old (the first time), and on to follow McCaffery through the Dragonrider’s of Pern and Le Guin through Earthsea, and from there to find classics like Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke. As a teen I read Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series, then his Gap series some years later, fascinated that he could be so brutal to his characters yet lead them through terrible sacrifice to victory, and a stunning victory at that.
Back then I didn’t care what genre it might be, or what form it came in either. Stars Wars films and all that followed them were always an easy yes for movie entertainment, and tv shows with science fiction themes and futuristic ideas were also favorites. The Fifth Element is a perfect example: colorful, dramatic, action-packed, romantic, idealistic, almost stereotypical but forgiven thanks to its charm and hopefulness.
I read Dave Duncan, Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tanya Huff, David Weber, Walter John Williams, Kevin J. Anderson, John Scalzi, and Larry Niven (whom I had breakfast with once!). I discovered Canadians like Charles de Lint and Guy Gavriel Kay and began to collect everything either had ever published. I joined critique circles and workshops and found more inspiration in local authors and small press. I have since enjoyed real-space time with many of these inspirational people, mostly at book conventions.
The big inspiration to write in space opera worlds is the joy of dreaming up possibility. Imagining how our future might play out is fun, a creative worldbuilding exercise that could someday come true, just as Star Trek and other shows’ ideas have come to life in our technology. Le Guin is quoted as saying,
“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.”
Space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction that David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as “colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.”
Yes, please, bring on the sympathetic heroes, big stakes, and optimism! But writing in this field also carries a responsibility, in my mind, because it is an opportunity to entertain while also revealing ourselves as who we really are, offering a mirror to our current state to see if that’s who we really want to be. How can you create a new reality if you don’t daydream it first, on any scale? We can play with our global vision of humanity’s existence to come, however that may look, and the more we play in each other’s worlds to discover what we like (and don’t like), the better we’ll refine and focus our collective efforts.
I’ve seen fifty years of influence that science fiction has had on our society, and overall, I feel it’s a good one. Science is about testing ideas to see if they’re true. Science fiction is about testing ideas too, emotional ones, cultural ones, ones that guide us as a civilization as we move outward into a space-faring race. To me, while delightful as escapist entertainment, it’s also a vital tool in creating our very future. All the names listed above and many more besides have inspired me because they have made use of this amazing opportunity to show us how things could be.
Freelance editor, fiction author, and wood artisan, Adria Laycraft earned honours in Journalism in ’92 and has always worked with words and visual art. She co-edited the Urban Green Man anthology in 2013, which was nominated for an Aurora Award, and launched her debut novel Jumpship Hope this summer. Look for her short stories in various magazines and anthologies both online and in print. Adria is a grateful member of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association (IFWA), and a proud survivor of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. Learn more at adrialaycraft.com or follow her YouTube channels Carving the Cottonwood and Girl Gone Vagabond.
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Adria, thank you so much for joining us! As a space opera junkie, I can’t wait to read your book!