On Saturday, September 18 2010, the Center for Values hosted writers’ workshops on the craft of science fiction. The group of 20 plus science fiction savvies met with our two guests: Robert J. Sawyer and Tony Daniel. For almost seven hours Rob and Tony were sharing their craft with us: how to work on a concept, how to introduce the main characters, and how to devise a problem our heroes would work hard to solve, how to make the plot plausible and interesting? And most importantly, how to craft a dialog with our audience about the issues we deem essential, whether it is an emergence of a AI consciousness, or the issue of singularity, or alternative universes, or… human enhancement.
We perspired, and we laughed, and we were filling our minds with nutritional food-for-thoughts for the story we are going to write one day. At least some of us will.