I truly enjoy writing short fiction. It’s usually Science Fiction although I’ve considered branching out. A question I get asked (as most writers do) is “where do you get your ideas from.” That one’s too easy…just take a batch of realty and add imagination to taste.
If you want an interesting story then stir in a little imagination. Or if you want it to get crazy, you can mix it 50/50 and shake it like a mad man!
Here’s an example…I recently read an article about an asteroid that may collide with Earth sometime around 2182. Scientists aren’t too worried because today they calculate there is only a one in a thousand chance of it actually colliding. WHAT! I personally don’t like those odds. But no worries…we’ve got time…they’ll take another look at it in 60 years or so to see what any new calculations have to show.
You can see, with a little imagination, reality makes the movie 2012 tame by comparison.
Check that article here:
Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Might Collide With The Earth In 2182
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Potentially_Hazardous_Asteroid_Might_Collide_With_The_Earth_In_2182_999.html
The funny thing is that NASA typically moves the space station if the odds of a space junk impact are within a 1-in-10,000 chance and there is sufficient time to plan a debris avoidance maneuver. So it’s Ok that a planet killing asteroid has a 1-in-1,000 chance of wiping out civilization but if there is a 1-in-10,000 chance of something hitting the space station…we’ll pack up and move it.
I guess it’s a question of time (the asteroid is still 170 years away) and probability (21,000 pieces of potential disaster floating around in orbit) and capability (you can’t move the Earth out of the way).
To put space junk in perspective…NASA works with the U.S. military's Space Surveillance Network to track potentially dangerous space debris flying in low-Earth orbit. To date, there are more than 21,000 pieces of space junk that are tracked in Earth orbit by the SSN, though a NASA document states that up to 500,000 pieces of debris are currently circling the planet.
Here is that article:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/space-station-space-debris-threat-100729.html
So now I have ideas for stories about a collision with Earth, or it misses the Earth and hits the Moon, or a collision with the Space Station, or if I want to shake it up – All of them! I could pull many more ideas out of just these two articles so now It’s time to stop reading and add some notes to my “future stories” file.
