Reviewing History From The Future

[Philip]

I am in the process of writing a new science fiction tale set in the far future and I am interested in opinions of readers and authors on the amount of back history I should include. For example describing large scale societal changes.

I do not want to lose the focus from the main story but I have personally felt mislead when a sci-fi tale casually drops a background piece in with no explanation.

What do you think?

[Reeves]

Speaking from the point of view of a reader, I think that the back history is important if it plays into the landscape that you are writing in. However, the best way put in that history is not to just write it out but bring it out as part of the story you are telling. Sometimes appropriate flashbacks, "stories" told by other characters, or similar concepts are much better than just "telling" the history.

[Kristi]

Ditto what Reeves says.

If you can come up with a clever device for telling the story, so much the better.

Did you watch the first Starship Troopers? They had that over the top Newsman/narrator with the WWII style newsreels, that always ended with: Would you like to learn more? (This was before the big dot com explosion where everyone started adding their websites to their ads.) That introduced the history leading up to the point of the story in a clever way that really made an impact on me. I mean, how long ago did that movie come out?

[Philip]

Thanks for the comments, I have used the back story parts to provide character history at I hope appropriate moments. I an trying ti figure how to put in large scale social changes one example is a large scale famine that happened over a thousand years previously but change governments and dramatically reduced the human population. I want to describe how the new society works otherwise several parts of the plot won't make sense. So far I have dropped in odd references but they feel a bit contrived. I guess I'll re-write them until they feel un-contrived.

[Susie]

Sometimes books that require elements of back history end up with other books devoted to that back history, i.e. (off the top of my head) Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Lord of the Rings has also various extra books with some back history to it, too.

What I generally find with information, as I read a lot of fantasy and some sci-fi, is that it only helps when it's necessary, otherwise you could over-bore readers with too much detail. Extended glossaries can help, too, in explaining various specific terms plus other extra information (in the case of Wheel of Time, this information is put in italics and can then be looked up in the glossary).

[Reeves]

You could also consider something similar to Hunger Games where there is an event relative to the past that is explained. You could have something commemorating whatever was done to prevent future large scale famine and this commemoration could be explained to someone who is young who doesn't understand it. It wouldn't have to be a centerpiece to the storyline like in Hunger Games but could really be just a scene setter.

[Philip]

Thanks for the advice and good pointers, glossaries are interesting but I ran into problem on my first book with the cast list works well in a printed copy but not so well in an ebook.

This book is the first in a planned Sci-Fi series so I have the opportunity for further back story. I guess overall though, I'll have to wait to see if any readers, I might get, comment on unexplained or not sufficiently explained elements.