ust as a ‘where I got my ideas’ note….What really inspired Faded Sun was twofold: during my teens my family did a lot of vacationing in or near the SW deserts and most importantly, I had had a disaster of an early try at a marine fish tank. The thing sat dried out in the corner. And I began to think of Leigh Brackett’s Mars stories in that dessicated tank, but combined with my knowledge of saltwater ecology AND what would happen during a millennium of retreating water as a planet dried out. Hence the lifeforms, many dedicated to bringing water to the surface, where co-dependent lifeforms could use it. The where do you get your ideas question is one writers can rarely answer because the sources are so subtle and varied, but that one (this came up because of the current Dune movie) I certainly can.
Where do you get your ideas?
by CJ | Oct 26, 2021 | Journal | 5 comments
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Faded Sun was my introduction to C. J. Cherryh, and I love it still. Sent me right off to read every word I could find; it’s nice to read some of the inspiration!
It doesn’t only take inspiration. You have a facility for explaining your ideas in a way that makes them accessible and understandable to your reader. Sometimes your ideas send me off at a tangent wondering what-if, but creating the world and the characters to populate it are beyond my ability. I don’t count myself as a dummy, but I sure can’t do what you do and imagine the worlds, societies, and environments which you populate with your unforgettable characters. Thanks for the escape you provide when the world gets too much.
IMO, the critical thing is it all has to logically hang together. The author can stretch, postulate some extension of “the Laws of the Universe” in new directions, e.g. “branes” or “strings”, but absolutely cannot violate the known laws of physics. That is the realm of Fantasy.
I spent a lot of time in college with the idea that the observed Universe is the surface of an expanding four-dimensional sphere, as Abbott did with “Flatland”. And of course, the shortest distance between Singapore & London ISN’T a Great Circle route, but a chord through the Earth! Likewise my view of the Universe has the same possibility of “FTL”, if we could break through the “surface tension”. See, that’s logical, it works. That’s Science Fiction.
My friend wasn’t paying attention and read the Faded Sun books out of order. It was only after she’d read all three that she discovered why it was a rather surreal experience.
The Morgaine Trilogy was my gateway drug. I got the first book shortly after it came out and started it about 6 pm, thinking I’ll just read the first chapter to decompress after work and relax before supper. The next thing I knew, I’d turned the last page and it was 3 o’clock in the morning. That’s how I learned to save CJ’s books for days off and start reading them early in the morning.
I was introduced to CJ through Thieve’s World (talk about pulp fiction off the grocery aisle back in the 80s).
My little teenage mind always suspected that the character Ischade was a fictional self-portrait, based on all those c’s and h’s in her name.