stop. start. stutter.

When I let it quietly be known around Six Apart that I was going to be trading in the exciting fast-paced life of a dotcom employee -- and no, that's not sarcasm; it's all that and more, and I really love so many things about the job and the community I'm leaving behind -- one of the first questions out of everyone's mouth was, "So, what are you going to be writing?"

"Science fiction," I would say. And -- since these conversations always take place over AIM or irc, never face to face; I see my coworkers three or four times a year, tops, being a telecommuter who's telecommuting three thousand miles or so -- I would have to interpret the several-minutes' silence as the equivalent of That Face. You know. The one where the person you're talking to gets really quiet, and you can see written across their face oh my God, what do I say now?

And then there'd be some kind of really diplomatic response, the kind that goes along the lines of, well, I don't usually read science fiction, but I can't wait to see your stuff! (To which I say, of course, "Thank you! Don't forget to tell your friends.") One question I got, though, a question that sort of stopped me in my tracks for a minute trying to think of a way I could answer it, was (on the surface) really simple, and (underneath) really, really complex. And that question was: "Why science fiction?"

Because, see, I know a hell of a lot of technology people. Geeky people. People on the bleeding edge of the technology curve; people who, daily, live the kind of things people were speculating about fifty years ago. People who understand this digital revolution we're riding inside and out. People who go to work so they can build things that let us all talk to each other in this strange and bizarre frontier of ones and zeroes that layer into people and conversations and ideas and communities. Surely if anyone would understand the appeal of science fiction, it would be the people who are doing things, living things, so full of wonder that someone from a hundred years ago would think them magic.

Why science fiction? Because we're swimming in it.

Elizabeth Bear posted a really thought-provoking entry today ("Angels in the Abbatoir"), which got me thinking again (and again and again and again) about the perpetual conversation: is science fiction still relevant? (I trust I need not repeat the argument here; old-time fen may feel free to chime in again the next time it comes 'round on the gee-tar.) I've seen hundreds of arguments for and against the relevance of the sf message, the question of whether or not we (writers) are flogging dead horses or we (readers) are turning away in droves or we (the sf community) are drawing inward and becoming parodies of ourselves, reinforcing the Old Way of thinking and becoming entrenched in What Has Always Been. I've heard a lot of smart people make a lot of really good points one way or the other.

I don't have the answers; on a good day, I have a chance in hell of fully grokking the question. I'm a fan, not a Fan; my sociologist's brain refuses to let me believe that I have enough data to even begin formulating theories.

But I've been reading sf since I was eleven, when my dad -- frustrated by the complaints that I'd exhausted everything in the children's section of the library and that they were all boring, Dad, BORING! -- threw up his hands, pushed a Star Trek tie-in novel at me, and said "Here." (I suspect, in retrospect, that he was simply tired of listening to me whine.) Over the next year and a half or so, I chewed through every single sf book I could beg, borrow, or interlibrary loan, everything from Golden Age to cyberpunk, and I'm still reading it today.

And some of it was good, and some of it was tolerable, and some of it was not my cuppa, and some of it -- I say this with all seriousness -- changed my life. It taught me how to think -- it taught me to think -- and how to feel, how to be capable of feeling. It taught me how look around me and isolate trends, how to view the world as a beautiful spiral of connection and consequence. It taught me that we are what we make of ourselves, and that we have within us -- us-the-species, us-the-culture, us-the-individual -- the seeds of both great benevolence and great atrocity.

Science fiction taught me about people. It taught me that technology is a lens through which human nature is enhanced and multiplied, for better or for worse. It taught me that understanding is systemic: every fact, every culture, every concept, every idea, is just a single touchpoint in the web of interconnections, and when you dip your hand into that sea and lift out a single shining jewel, it's trailing lines and links and cross-references and history along behind it. It taught me that we're all fumbling along our journey to define ourselves, trying to pin a tail on the rapidly-running donkey of What Is Right and What Is Good and What Is Necessary and What Is Ethical and What Is Human. It taught me that in the end, what we're all trying to do -- every day, in a thousand different fits and starts -- is hold a mirror up and stare at it and try to decide if we like what we see or not.

Science fiction taught me that the universe is made wider, not smaller, by seeking to understand it. It taught me that the universe is beautiful. It taught me that there are things we'll be able to understand, and things we'll never be able to do more than guess at. It taught me that physics and linguistics and cognitive science and sociology and math and philosophy and a whole lot of other things are really all the same subject viewed through different lenses, and they all have important things to say to us about What We Are and Where We're Going. (And then a bunch of really lousy science and math teachers tried to beat that lesson out of me, but dammit, I triumphed, and my dyscalculaic brain can still see the beauty in a bunch of equations even if I don't understand how you solve 'em. Take that, middle school math!)

Science fiction taught me how to formulate a personal code of ethics. Not what those ethics should be, mind you. But how to think about them, and how to think rationally-not-emotionally about them, and how to think about them in advance so I'd act, not react, when a situation came up. Science fiction taught me that it's our duty (as people, as human beings) to ask ourselves those questions, and challenge those pre-conceived notions we get programmed with by our societies from the minute we first start processing input.

Science fiction taught me that we're all on this crazy ride together.

These are the stories I have to tell. Not the ones about computers and spaceships and Bug-Eyed Monsters -- although the novel I'm working on does have both computers and spaceships, even if the Bug-Eyed Monster would like it to be known that he is neither monstrous nor particularly bug-eyed, and really he'd be very happy with just a cup of tea and a place to put his feet up, thank you very much -- but the ones about people. The ones about relationships. The ones about defining Self, and by that token defining Other, and what responsibilities and obligations you take on once you've drawn those lines. The ones about how everything, everywhere, is all part of everything else, and sometimes you know that and sometimes you don't but it's still and always true.

I'm writing science fiction because I want to tell you a story about who you are. About who you could be. About what the World-That-Is tells us about ourselves, and about what the World-That-Might-Be tells us about the World-That-Is.

And the question shouldn't be "why science fiction?" It should be "why not science fiction?" The next time one of my technology-loving, early-adopting, online-community-building friends or acquaintances asks me "so, why are you writing science fiction", I may just turn it around right back on them: What can I do to show you that it's just another facet of the conversations we're having every day? What can I do to show you that these are our stories, every last damn one of us?

I don't have an answer to those questions yet, but that's what I'm embarking on this journey to find. Come on. Let me tell you a story. We'll figure it out together.