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Dr Iain Robinson, author, lecturer and UEA's MA in Creative Writing course director, delves into his techniques for creating immersive sci-fi worlds and engaging concepts.
How do you immerse a reader in a sci-fi setting?
What comes to mind when you think of a sci-fi setting? Probably a distant alien world, or the colonies of the planets of our own solar system, or a glittering future city. Such strange new worlds provide us with spaces in which to dream or have nightmares about our technological or social futures. In science fiction, such speculation might focus on the effects of the development of technology on society, and this in turn might lead to dystopian or utopian visions of the future.
Stories set in the future, as is frequently the case in dystopias, or stories set on other planets, in galaxies far, far away, are all using this same idea of a voyage into the unknown.
Early utopian writing frequently uses the idea of a voyage to an unknown, previously uncharted land as a device with which to resituate the protagonist and reader, perhaps as a way of exploring ethical, political, and theological questions in a safe fictive space. Stories set in the future, as is frequently the case in dystopias, or stories set on other planets, in galaxies far, far away, are all using this same idea of a voyage into the unknown. The reader is confronted by an alien and defamiliarising society but also perceives in that society a reflection of their own world. This encounter with otherness becomes a transforming encounter in which the reader has a shock of recognition and understands something new about the world and themselves in it.
So, success in immersing your reader in a science fiction setting comes in part from your ability to make that setting a strange and distorted version of the world your reader is already situated in, dissimilar enough for it to feel like a convincing future or faraway land, but similar enough for it to feel like a realistic extrapolation or exaggeration of our present circumstances.
How do you come up with original and engaging sci-fi concepts?
The speculation need not be confined to the far future. Writers might speculate on the here and now, on how the world would respond to the sudden new discovery – alien visitors, humans with superpowers, time travel and so on. Note the emphasis on ‘newness’ here, which is what critic Darko Suvin terms ‘novum’, a novel insertion into an otherwise normal situation that brings about an encounter with something unfamiliar and transformative.
Try to imagine situations, discoveries, encounters that are so far beyond our current paradigm that they seem incredibly strange. Then make the strange, the unlikely, the horrifying, a realistic extrapolation of our present circumstances.
Imagine the discovery of an obelisk which sends everyone who examines it mad – an idea derivative enough for you to recognise it as a trope and to see how it might be developed into a story. The obelisk is alien, other, but also transforms those who encounter it. There is panic. The military, mystics, linguists, computer scientists, and artificial intelligences, are all employed to try to unlock the secret of its arrival. They all fail because it is waiting for one individual, an unlikely twelve-year-old boy, who has been having visions of its arrival for as long as he can recall. The boy is the key.
I hope that’s an engaging concept. You can come up with a better one. Imagining how technology and science might develop, how it might transform the world for ill or for good, might help you to think about your concept and setting. You might also need to think about how societies and individuals might respond to transformative events, to encounters with ‘otherness’, and/or to sudden step changes in technology. Finally, and this is the tricky part, try to imagine situations, discoveries, encounters that are far beyond our current understanding of the world. Then take those strange, unlikely, or even terrifying ideas and show how they could grow out of our world.
Which science fiction books or authors have inspired your writing?
There are too many to mention, but I will try to be selective. H. G. Wells more or less invents the genre as we recognise it. The War of the Worlds (1898) turns the experience of colonial domination back onto the British with a Martian invasion of Surrey. The blood-sucking machine-dependent aliens seem to work as a metaphor for the industrial exploitation of the masses. John Wyndham in The Day of the Triffids (1951), or John Christopher in The Death of Grass (1956), develop similar scenarios in which a novel event leads to the sudden breakdown of society in ways that are revelatory of the social and political tensions that exist within it.
The science fiction writers I find most interesting are those working on the edges of the genre, pushing at them, or creating hybrids that in turn lead to new subgenres. Recently, I’ve been interested in cyberpunk, a subgenre which blends technological science fiction with noir-like elements, and which contains echoes of the urban gothic of the nineteenth century. Interesting new works are coming out of Latin America, such as Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy (2025), a novel which blends body-horror, dystopia, and cyberpunk. I’ve also been impressed by Emily St John Mandel’s novel Sea of Tranquility (2022), a story set in different past and future time periods which explores simulation theory, the idea that our reality is an advanced hyper-realistic simulation.
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Dr Iain Robinson is a lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature in the School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He is the MA Creative Writing course director. His areas of expertise include dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature. He has a strong interest in how creative writing can amplify and complement scientific work on climate, ecology, and environmental crisis. Dr Robinson's short stories have been widely published, including recognition in Best British Short Stories: 2018. His dystopian novel, The Buyer, was published in 2014. He has contributed critical studies on contemporary authors Sarah Hall, Rupert Thomson, and Will Self.
Creative Writing at UEA
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