Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Top Ten Things I Learned from Science Fiction

10. All races may be created equal, but humans are even more so.

9. Any alien with a bublous pale forehead and big black faceted eyes is prone to kidnapping and abduction.

8. The engines can't take any more o' this...unless, of course, the captain tells me we have to go twice as fast. I can do that.

7. If a job is going to take x hours to accomplish, tell your boss it'll take 2x hours. That way you can take some time off to drink alien swill while the enemy is pulverizing planet earth, and you'll still come out looking like a hero.

6. Any impossible task necessary for the continuation of the human race will become possible - through the magic of pseudo-science - moments before Armageddon actually begins.

5. All aliens are so stupid that they think they can make accurate predictions about the human race simply by abducting and experimenting on one human.

4. The maximum attainable speed while traveling through space is in direct correlation to the needs of the plotline.

3. Aliens might have more intelligence, more technology, more psychic powers, more ingenuity, and more raw physical strength than humans, but hey, we've got courage and grim determination, and that trumps everything else in any crisis.

2. Bending the rules, breaking the rules, throwing the rules on the ground and stomping them to an unrecognizeable pulp...this is perfectly okay if you are the protagonist - otherwise it means you are an evil alien disguised as a superior officer.

1. Aliens with more brain power than a thousand super computers, who have stored up knowledge and wisdom over the course of many millenia, always have philosophical ideals which are virtually identical to those of the writers who invented them.

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