Guest Post - Writing to the Future #scifi #futuristic #dystopian #romance

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions. But my preference is definitely for science fiction, whether it be set in the future, on an alternative timeline, or on an alien planet. I rarely write in the here and now, and when I do it tends to be a real place that 'might have been'.

My personal view of the future is pretty dystopian. Unfortunately real life events mean I have a rather dim and dismal view of humanity's future and that's often reflected in my books. Even the ones where humans have ventured out and colonised other worlds, sometimes genetically or mechanically enhanced (or even fully converted to an artificial body), the Earth has usually been destroyed or fallen so far into myth no one believes in it. I'm just hoping that enough of us manage to leave the planet before its destruction.

The future fascinates me. We've made so much progress in the relatively short time human beings have existed. Things written about in SF a few decades back are now reality, and some like teleportation and invisibility shields are being tested out. My hope is to live long enough to see human beings step on the surface of Mars. But since I'm not likely to see human beings go further than that, and won't get to do it myself first hand, I explore the possibilities in my books instead, or think about what might have happened should history have taken a different tack...

In When Dark Falls I combined my love for all things Art Deco with superheroes and an alternative post apocalyptic city somewhere on Earth. Everything is diesel powered, but we have flying bikes as well as zeppelins, lots of advanced tech for the era but cast in brass, chrome and bakelite, cyborgs with body parts made from clockwork, goggles and gasmasks, and a villain one reader referred to as a 'steampunk Darth Vader'. My superheroes have been driven underground and are fighting not just for the city, but their own survival.

When Dark Falls

For most of my scifi romances, I've moved far from Earth in both distance and time. My time travel romance series has given me the opportunity to revisit another time period I enjoy - the medieval - while also jumping to alien planets and using futuristic technology. That just might have been influenced somewhat by my life long love of cult British TV series Doctor Who. 

The Redemption Series

With my series and other SFR titles I get to explore my favourite subject - science - while mixing it with fantasy, paranormal and adventure elements, the kind of things I enjoy while watching films like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, or other scifi series like Farscape and Star Trek (all incarnations). The research is so much fun for me: new or theoretical drives for spaceships, artificial gravity, alien ecosystems, and even things like studying frozen frogs and what happens to a body in vacuum (grim I know, but then it means I can come up with facts like, 'did you know you can survive for 90 seconds in open space provided you don't hold your breath?' Um, yeah, possibly not that helpful to the average person unless you like dazzling people with interesting and obscure facts... :P

I have cyborgs and aliens, a race of genetically engineered assassins called Inc-Su who can walk through walls and suck the life force right out of their targets, android avatars with real human minds, zombies walking the swamps of an alternative Louisiana or a utopian city of the future, the curse of immortality, asteroid miners and rebels on the run. In all my stories I live out the adventures I would have loved to take part in myself. Okay, maybe more watch from a safe distance...

But no matter how dark my vision of the future is, there is always hope. Love conquers all, even if it's just the hero's personal demons so that they can go on to save the day.

Want to chat? Find me on my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter as @pippajaygreen