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

Time Travel Wish #amwriting

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of SciFi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions.
Until recently, I loved the place that I lived. Brexit and the hideous aftermath that seems set to get much worse before any possibility of it getting better has had me looking longingly at vague plans I started making for a possible move to New Zealand.
But if I'm honest, I would rather travel in time than space. Maybe it's because of being a lifelong Whovian. I have two specific time periods I would like to visit, though I'm not sure the reality might live up to my expectations and be somewhere I'd want to stay indefinitely.

Firstly the medieval period. I love the castles, the clothing, the weapons. I'm a big fan of the Ellis Peters books following the investigations of a medieval Welsh monk, Cadfael, and we go to the local medieval fairs and jousts. But I'm not sure I could put up with the lack of hygiene, medical care, or the loss of my beloved smartphone.
I would also love to visit the future, to see the human race set foot on Mars, or perhaps even farther afield.

Most of all I'd love to see my rather dystopian view of our future proved wrong. We are capable of so much more, and yet our main achievement appears to be an irresistible desire for self destruction. We seem to find it so much easier to destroy and to hate than create and love. Maybe in the future we could find a way to eliminate the darker, more negative side of our psyches. I would like to see us achieve that, rather than something like this:

But some days I feel like a nice solitary cave somewhere might suit me best. I'm a bit of a hermit by nature even before I became an author.

How I ended up with a husband and three monsters, I'm not quite sure. But I'd have to go home to them at some point because I could never leave them behind forever. ^_^
Want to chat? Find me on Twitter as @pippajaygreen or at my website http://pippajay.co.uk
(Images courtesy of pixabay.com)