What a Shock That Was!

The great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein influenced a whole generation of SF writers with his beloved "Heinlein juveniles." He once said that the way to write a book for non-adult readers is to write the very best story you can, then cut out all the sex. My one novel, Dykstra's War that formula. I didn't specifically set out to write a YA book, but I did want it to be the sort of story anyone 11 and up could read. I didn't actually cut any sex out--I just didn't put any into it in the first place.

The other day my daughter Ashley said she was going to read my book, so it was sitting out and I picked it up and started to glance through it. Since I tend to write exactly what I like to read, I found myself reading large sections of it. I happened upon a part of the story when two of the characters start to admit that they have feelings for each other, and Shazam!--there was a place where I could have had a love/sex scene.

What a shock that was!

I don't mean I could have just stuck one in gratuitously. I've been reading some SF romance novels lately, and because of that I noticed that my earlier work had the right sort of romantic elements to have been an SF romance, if I'd just added a few scenes and written my characters with the romance element in mind. In the section I read, I saw how it would have naturally flowed into romance if I'd just wanted to go that way.

Well, the book is once again mine to do with as I please--it is out of print and I own the rights. And if I ever finish the sequel that I started, there are aspects in the original I'd like to revise (no one has the future equivalent of a cell phone in my book, for instance). So maybe, just maybe, I will turn Dykstra's War into an SF romance, and see how it flies.