Can genes be patented? Is it ethical to treat depression with electrical stimulation through deep brain implants? If a person gives genetic samples for research, and a pharmaceutical company finds a way to turn that into a multi-million dollar enterprise, should the donor be compensated?

Do these sound like dynamite premises for science fiction? Before you start writing, consider this: these are factual issues being played out in headlines of the real word today.

Science fiction is becoming more and more difficult to write, because scientific reality is outrunning literary imagination. Writers of science fiction have to find ways of booting current scientific trends to a new level that scientists have not considered. That's a huge challenge. Scientist are an outstandingly creative fellowship of explorers. Like writers, they ponder, "What if . . .?" and then set out to explore the implications of their hypotheses.

To be a successful science fiction writer, you have to know the craft of fiction and the nuts and bolts of science, and fuse them together so artfully that readers can't distinguish the two. Like travelers without a compass,.they will follow you anywhere if you present them with recognizable facts and then lead them confidently into the unknown.. At the end of the story, they will shake their heads, trying to clear them, wondering whether they have been living in a dream or reality.

To ground yourself in the field, read. Read science fiction. Read the Scientific American. Read the newspaper headlines. Journalistic interpretations of science are often flawed, .but they will give you ideas for research. From there, you can take a leap of faith into speculation. What if? What if this is true, or that is false? What if gravity suddenly stopped existing? What if anthropologists in another world did an in-depth study of the Montel Williams show? What if First Contact happened at your Bible study, and the visitors were looking for definitive information about God?

Science is so fascinating that it can easily become more important than the characters in a science fiction story. That may work in the short term, but a decade from now, when the science is old hat, obsolete, or proven to be false, the story will stand or fall on how authentically it paints the human condition.

No matter what the genre, readers will be seduced by the plausible tale of someone they can relate to struggling with issues that matter. Fiction is art, and in the artistic creative process, science must remain art's handmaiden.

Tips:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/module13p
How to write science fiction.

Learn more about this author, Christine G..
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