Here’s another of my favorite bits of commentary on writing. This is Larry Niven discussing the problem of writing a science fiction mystery, from the afterword to The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton:
How can the reader anticipate the author if all the rules are strange? If science fiction recognizes no limits, then … perhaps the victim was death-wished from outside a locked room, or the walls may be permeable to X-ray laser. Perhaps the alien’s motivation really is beyond human comprehension. Can the reader really rule out time travel? Invisible killers? Some new device tinkered together by a homicidal genius?
More to the point, how can I give you a fair puzzle? With great difficulty, that’s how. There’s nothing impossible about it. In a locked room mystery you can trust John Dickson Carr not to ring in a secret passageway. You can trust me too. If there’s an X-ray laser involved, I’ll tell you so. If I haven’t mentioned an invisible man, there isn’t one. If the ethics of Belt society are important, I will have gone into detail on the subject.
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