How I became a writer of science fiction

From reader of galaxies to hacker of realities: how I became a writer

Before I was a writer, I was a smuggler of futures. As a child my treasure wasn't coins or marbles, but paper portals that smelled of old ink. Every book was a spaceship and I was its stowaway, travelling to worlds lit by binary suns, chrome cities and futures where humanity came face to face with its own technological ghosts. I didn't read them, I dived into them. And in the middle of that whirl of artificial intelligences, time loops and dystopias, a question started whispering in my ear, louder every year:

What if I built the next portal myself?

The clandestine laboratory: from reader to maker

The idea was a virus. It infected me for years, but fear was the perfect antivirus. Who was I to dare build a world? So I started in the secrecy of a blank page. I wrote stories nobody was meant to see, thought experiments not intended for other eyes. They were my test bed, my laboratory of imperfect futures, the only way to give a voice to the ideas colliding inside my head.

And then the magic happened. Every finished story was a small monster I stopped being afraid of. I began showing them, pulse racing, to my inner circle. I wasn't after medals, only an accomplice. I wanted to know whether anyone else could see what I saw in those lines. To my surprise, they connected. They liked my small monsters.

The vertigo of “publish”

I don't know whether it was courage or sheer recklessness, but one day I felt I could no longer keep my worlds hidden. They deserved more than a handful of readers. If I wanted to be a writer, I had to accept the whole bargain: write, polish and, most terrifying of all, expose myself. Take the leap.

That leap has a name: The Loop. My first novel. A technothriller with a neon soul, set in a world trapped in a twenty-four-hour cycle everyone is aware of… and nobody can escape.

Pressing the “publish” button was the most terrifying and, at the same time, the most liberating click of my life. Because publishing doesn't only make you dizzy. It gives you life.

Hacking reality, not escaping it

Crossing that line was a point of no return. I understood that writing science fiction wasn't my hobby; it was my operating system. My way of processing the world, of putting the big questions through the most impossible scenarios.

I haven't stopped since. I keep exploring technologies, alternative futures and the ethical dilemmas waiting for us around the corner. Because to me, science fiction is not a way of escaping reality.

It is a way of hacking it.

If you have the “virus” too…

Maybe you feel that same itch, that question whispering in your ear. Don't wait for “the big idea”, or for a muse in an astronaut suit to knock at your door. Start typing. Write the story only you can tell, even if it is only for yourself.

Share your source code when you are ready. You may not change the world, but I guarantee you will change yours. And that, my friend, is the best bug in the system.

Jose M. Aldasoro

Author of The Loop and explorer of imperfect futures.

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