I can't think of how many times I have started novels. It is really kind of embarrassing to contemplate. I have thrown away pages and pages of work because I either ran out of gas or ran out of interest. Plots falling apart and becoming ridiculous. Of course I always tried to write "hard" sci-fi, which meant a slavish attention to scientific detail and a lot of the plotlines I wrote fell apart when I couldn't make them conform with physics.
So, now that I am in my dotage, and in the middle of a intellectual late-life crisis, I am revisiting my dreams of writing. I think that I will discard the hard sci-fi bent I so worshipped in the past. The constraints of physical science are being questioned. What I see as the limits of science and technology just lead to differing flavors of dystopia's.
So, since we are in the time of transition in the real world (and anyone who thinks that business as usual will continue is in a fool's paradise) I am thinking that maybe a novel about transition will be a way to go. But what transition do I think will be interesting? That is the question.
So, since I have been spending time slumming over at JMG' trying to ure out what the hell is all about the old "knowledge" of witchcraft and occultism and other previously untouchable (untouchable to me in my salad days anyway) subjects, I am thinking that those subjects and my not yet discarded yet slavish attention to the scientific method may provide an avenue of writing interest.
Now, I am by no means thinking that I am the first person to come up with such an amazing idea. Waldo and Magic Inc. came out long ago, and Neal Stephenson's DODO had a pretty fair go at this particular sub-sub genre.
So what I am thinking is a novel about the reintroduction of magic into the world. As outline above, the genre has been tried before. One might even say that the attempts have been pretty fair. But what to emphasize? Is the protaganist a hard scientist who converts or a soft scientist who is the missionary? Or do I do a two-protaganist novel that bridges and documents the dialectic?
One of the big questions will be how does the magic rise out of the dead ground that science has relegated it to? Both the Magic Inc. and DODO novels did quite a bit of hand waving around this subject. I think that DODO did the best job of generating a believable scenario, but if if go down this genre-path, I will have to define the loosing of magic.
Also needs to be discussed is the physical means of writing such a thing. I am gradually coming to the conclusion that, for me, writing may not be the solitary activity so enamored by current urban myth. Characters must be an outgrowth of reality, and if I write dialog between character without grounding the same in actual human interaction, what the writing becomes is an exercise in intellectual masturbation.