{"id":705,"date":"2008-10-06T16:26:22","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T00:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=705"},"modified":"2008-10-06T16:29:47","modified_gmt":"2008-10-07T00:29:47","slug":"toddler-dreams-of-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/06\/toddler-dreams-of-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"Toddler Dreams of SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in the last post, I\u2019m working on my memoir, Nested Scrolls<\/em>, which, although not SF itself, is partly about becoming an SF writer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Memoirs are so big anymore. I was reading the NY Times Sunday Book Review <\/em> yesterday, and I saw two or three of memoirs reviewed. One memoir by some cosseted literary mandarin, aged 62 like me, focusing on how worried he is about death. Aren’t we all…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My own memoir is going pretty well, now that I vaguely know what I\u2019m doing. The rest of this post is a quoted bit about my earliest efforts towards science fiction thinking.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My parents tended to send me to bed before I was really tired. So I\u2019d play mental games while I was waiting to fall asleep. I developed a little repertoire of fun things to think about, fantastic powers like shrinking, breathing underwater, or flying through the air. Looking back, I can see that, all along, I was meant to be a science-fiction writer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One particular evening\u2019s imaginings stick in my mind. I imagined being an inch tall and walking around my room. The space beneath my bed was like a dim, dusty hall. The mouse that sometimes invaded our house was there, the size of a horse. He could talk, and he was friendly. I rode the mouse into the kitchen and got us two slices of apple pie with chunks of cheddar cheese. It was more than we could possibly eat, but we tried.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I made myself still smaller, the size of one of the dust specks I\u2019d noticed floating in sunlit air. I drifted across the kitchen and through the grill of the window screen. Outside a gentle breeze set me down upon a blooming flower at the top of our magnolia tree. I took a swim in a dewdrop resting on the flower\u2019s petals. Music chimed from the palace-like structure at the flower\u2019s center. Perhaps a princess lived there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My mind turned back to the sensation of drifting up through the air\u2014and I switched to imagining I could fly at will. I often had flying dreams\u2014in the dreams I\u2019d launch myself by hopping backwards, and instead of crashing to the ground, I\u2019d angle upwards and float on my back as if I were in a swimming pool. And now, just like in the dreams, I launched myself into the air from the back yard of our house. I shot up through the clouds and followed the light to downtown Louisville where the big buildings were. I circled all around them, and I flew under the Ohio River bridge. And now I shot straight upwards, higher and higher to where the air was cold and thin. Looking down, I saw the cities of Kentucky and Indiana as splashes of light.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But now\u2014as so often happened in my flight fantasies\u2014I suddenly lost the ability to fly. So long as I believed it was possible, I stayed aloft, but the minute I doubted myself, I began a long tumble. The air beat at my face and fluttered my pajamas.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And now came the best part of the falling fantasy. There was a hole in the ground below. I was falling into an endless empty void, a canyon or mineshaft that went down forever. Lave dripped from the distant rocky walls, small goblins peeped at me. But I didn\u2019t need to worry about hitting bottom. I would fall forever and a day, on and on, world without end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in the last post, I\u2019m working on my memoir, Nested Scrolls, which, although not SF itself, is partly about becoming an SF writer. Memoirs are so big anymore. I was reading the NY Times Sunday Book Review yesterday, and I saw two or three of memoirs reviewed. One memoir by some cosseted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}