Welcome to Fiction Engineers!
I’m Perrin, an scifi/fantasy author by night and engineer by day.
This blog will be about a few different things, but the list below covers the major topics in rough order of how much I plan to write about them:
Engineering Ideas in Fiction
I’ve always loved the different ways SFF authors approach their technology or magic systems in their stories. There’s a well-known range of “soft” to “hard” technology or magic systems that you’re likely familiar with through some famous examples.
- Hard magic: think Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn or Stormlight Archive series
- Soft magic: think Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones
- Hard technology (hard sci-fi): think The Martian, 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Note that some of these examples are considered controversial in some hardcore hard scifi communities 🙂
- Soft technology (soft sci-fi): think Star Wars (closer to fantasy, by some measures), Dune, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Each of these categories has its fans and haters, and the lines between them are often very blurry, and that’s all well and good. And many, especially the hard sci-fi category, have literally billions of internet words already written about them, diving into every scientific detail and theoretical explanation you could possibly want, if that’s your cup of tea.
My quest is to look at some interesting magic or technology systems from an approachable perspective; I’m not going to get into the mathematics or physics of things, even if I’m qualified to do so. Think of this blog as more of an intro course for the layperson, a way to get into the engineering mindset without being intimidated by the perception that you need a degree to create the magic or tech system you want.
In the end engineering is just problem solving with some physics mixed in, and I think problem solving is the best skill an author of any kind can have.
The Engineering of Fiction
The writing process is an area of study all its own, and in my own writing I’m constantly fascinated by how fiction gets made.
Fictional Engineers
And of course, since I’m writing a scifi serial and soon publishing a fantasy novel, I’ve got to dive into my own work. I’ll write about the making of my own stories, interesting things I find in my research for my books, and updates on the books themselves from time to time.
The Broken Javelin
The Broken Javelin is my debut fantasy novel, featuring Krivi, an unwilling assassin who is pressed into service thanks to his command of the Reach, a rare magical power that lets him extend his physical self into the world and get into all kinds of mischief.
Wing Six
Wing Six is a novel written in serial form, which follows Tommy, an engineer who helped build the ship that carried humanity away from a dying Earth to a new home. Needless to say, humans cause problems even on an idyllic new planet, and somebody’s got to fix them.
