Customer Reviews

Conceiving the Heavens: Creating the Science Fiction Novel

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Melissa Scott starts the book off with "A brief defense of science fiction, or why does someone who went to Harvard write this stuff anyway?" - and the book takes off. Even though the book is less than 200 pages long she covers important points of world building, characters, research, ideas and provides suggestions for getting published.

I've been a fan of Melissa Scott's fiction for many years and recently found a copy of her book about how to create a Science Fiction novel. I wish more SF authors would follow her advice. She is clear and concise about how to edit down your manuscript and decide how much detail to leave in. If you want to write a novel that I would buy, mine this book for technique. A good SF novel is more than a great idea that you've had while talking to your friends. :) Or you could just follow Harlan Ellison's comment "A writer is someone who writes"