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HOW FAR IS TOO FAR?
by Dale Brown, 2009

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, 16 June 2009

OK, this question is for YOU: When does it stop being a techno-thriller and instead becomes science fiction?

I have never been a huge sci-fi aficionado. "Star Trek," "Battlestar Galactica"--all good, but I never read much sci-fi. I always preferred Life and National Geographic as a kid (and not just for the half-naked female jungle native photos either).

My biggest concern as an aspiring author was to not disappoint my buddies still in the Air Force if they read my stuff. I didn't want they to say or think, "Jeez, Bear [my call-sign back in the day] is full of shit." It had to be real. I want to be realistic but still cutting-edge. I love the tech stuff, but I don't like the time-travel, faster-than-the-speed-of-light stuff.

But when I started writing "Flight of the Old Dog" back in the early 1980s, I started reading about stuff that might be coming out in the years to come: satellite navigation, aircraft nearly invisible to radar, directed-energy weapons, hypersonics, orbital weapons, microsatellites, unmanned attack aircraft being steered from thousands of miles away. But READING about this stuff was one thing, but WRITING stories about it was something else. Could I write about technology that was years or even decades from becoming real, if it ever did? I didn't want to write sci-fi.

It's not REALLY sci-fi, because someone is actually working on these new things, designing and engineering an idea into a piece of hardware or software. But if it looks, smells, and tastes like sci-fi, isn't it REALLY sci-fi?

I'm faced with that dilemma more than ever these days. Technology is expanding at an incredibly breathtaking pace. What seemed like sci-fi when I started writing novels over 20 years ago was demonstrated 8 years later in Desert Storm, and was commonplace a few years later over Serbia. The very idea that a $300 million bomber would launch over enemy territory AND NOT KNOW WHAT TARGETS IT WAS GOING TO HIT was unheard of in my day--over Afghanistan and Iraq today, it's a daily occurrence. A few years ago I read about space technology that MIGHT be developed in 5-10 years, and today they're talking about the first test flight already scheduled for next year.

So my question to you is: should I keep on projecting out into the future, perhaps farther than my usual 2-5 year time frame, perhaps out to 10 years? Should I write about stuff that may not be reality for a decade as if they are reality NOW, if only in my own little alternate universe? Drop me a note at readermail@airbattleforce.com.

A few other Blog notes:

-- I've had it done over the telephone or in person before, but it happened for the first time over the radio while inflight: on a personal flight in the Piper Aztec from Nevada to Monterey, Calif. last week, a NORCAL Approach air traffic controller asked me if I was "the" Dale Brown the author. He obviously read my flight plan strip and made the connection. Pretty cool.

-- I have to apologize for the weird Tahoe weather this month. Normally Tahoe would be sunny and in the low to high 70s in June--it's been rainy and high 50s all month. Explain that, Al Gore? I'm sure he'd say that global warming is creating unusual weather patterns and (like in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow") could actually cause COLDER weather.

-- It looks like Pres. Obama is starting to realize he's boxed up when it comes to foreign policy. Does anybody really believe he will engage diplomatically with Iran or North Korea? Will he come up with a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian mess? Has one Soldier come home from Iraq yet? Will he stop at just 20,000 MORE troops for Afghanistan? He should be thanking Pres. Bush for showing him the way--except he's too busy blaming Bush for getting him into the mess in the first place.

-- Where is stimulus money for the military? He knows how depleted our forces are--so what's he doing about it?

-- I noted today that the U.S. Air Force's new budget is expected to pin silver wings on more unmanned aerial vehicle pilots than fighter and bomber pilots COMBINED! Pretty incredible.

GBA, Dale...

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