Why do I write science fiction?

This is the important question for me this week. I worry that what I'm creating is nonsense, is just flat genre crap, paper dolls with lightsabers. The second TNEO deadline looming ominously might have something to do with this. My insomnia, also, although the TNEO deadline did not have anything to do with me imitating a banshee at three in the morning when I discovered that my very wonderful daughter was giggling loudly on the phone with her male friend from out of state. That was just my maternal madness. Maternal madness explains many things, including most ridiculous threats, i.e., if you don't hang up this second I will throw that phone AWAY. In the light of day, this is not much of a threat, since, a., the phone belongs to me, b., there are many more phones in the house, and c., I don't throw things away. At worst, I would have freecycled it.

Anyway, if I have a point, it is this: I am still after all these many years struggling to find my way. I want to laugh hollowly when my 20-year-olds say they don't know what they are doing with their lives. "Wait until you are 40!" I do say. But who does know their way? Stock brokers? Physicists? (I think physicists know that none of us actually know anything.)

Which brings me back to science fiction or, as I like to call it, odd little stories. The stories of people who seem to be monsters, who turn out to be misunderstood, or people who seem to be monsters who really are monsters, albeit misunderstood. The stories of the ends of the worlds, all of them. My own childhood, as tragic and hilarious as every other person's (except for stockbrokers), dressed up in scary masks and hats. But this is part of all fiction, right? So why science fiction? Maybe because I adore it so very much. I adore the great what-ifs. It is fun for me, and if I enjoy what I'm doing, it is better. It approaches art. Once in a great while, it IS art.