I’ve always, on some deeper level, been an aspiring writer. As a younger human I dreamt of penning novels upon novels upon novels, often about spaceships or fantastical lands or destroyed worlds and often ending with turnips (seriously). Eventually I grew to being more of a script-writer, someone who acknowledges their complete inability to create effective prose, but fails to recognise their ineptitude at dialogue. Nonetheless, my love of the high-concept remains, and many of my scripts still feature the space-y, fantasy, post-apocalyptic-y stuff that made my other stories fascinating.

In other words, I like sci-fi and fantasy. Serious sci-fi and fantasy. I was always in love with making the unreal seem plausible or passable, like you could immerse yourself entirely in the universes I’ve crafted and feel like it is as real as the one you’ve left. I’m no scientist, but the gadgets and gizmos I imagined my characters toying with were always things I believed possible, and I despised the dogma that since it is fiction ‘anything is possible’. That’s <EXPLETIVE DELETED>.

Anyway, I sincerely remember designing a full on space station for a story one time. I named her Cassandra, as in the tragic Greek character of mythology whose ability to see the future was ignored. Obviously in my story the beautiful Cassandra was doomed to fail.

I was going to present images of the pages upon pages of cryptic diagrams and equations that went into planning out this great ship, but it isn’t hard to picture if I can describe it well. You see, while she does come to ruin, structurally and technologically she is sound. Cassandra is circular. Not spherical. She’s round and flat, from a distance she is a great ring spinning steadily and silently in space. Humongous iron spokes hold the glinting, solar-panel encrusted circle to a central hub which stays still, an easy access point for ships containing supplies and passengers. There is a secondary ring, which sits just over halfway between the outer one and the hub. While the station may seem small at first, upon approach the mammoth qualities become apparent – Cassandra’s diameter is roughly ten kilmetres, and she is built to hold up to four hundred thousand residents.

All people would reside in the outer ring, which spins at a constant speed of nearly 100 kilometres per minute, or six thousand kilometres per hour. It’s an intense speed, and a tricky one to get to, but it would also provide the outer ring with the equivalent of Earth’s gravity, while the inner ring would be roughly half that. In order to oxygenate the station, this inner ring would house a grand rainforest of a garden, providing more than enough oxygen for the entire population to survive. In fact, some of that area may be able to be utilised as room for agriculture and provide some sustainable sustenance for anyone who lives in Cassandra.

It’s the epitome of grand designs, and it would be a nightmare to really put together, but I love the drama of it.

So what brings on my sudden need to relay the story of Cassandra? Obviously the readings on Design Fiction we had to do this week. Admittedly, I’ve so far only done one; Slate’s interview with Bruce Sterling; but it was a very interesting read. It puts design fiction in a separate category to science-fiction, implying that while they overlap, design-fiction strives to present a realistic idea of technology, rather than crafting elaborate machines and devices for purely narrative purposes. There were two videos which demonstrated this on his page, the first was incredibly boring and uninspiring, while the second was incredibly boring but featured a few glass-related devices that could be very useful. I must admit that I don’t really like the idea of there being interactive screens EVERYWHERE, but hey, why stand in the way of progress? All that was missing was Google Glass, the way of the future.

I don’t know where I stand. I’m a speculative guy, every time I write it is always with causality and reasoning in mind. I want to know why someone would do what my character does, why someone would invent what my character uses, what kind of culture would most likely develop around innovative technologies and what the repercussions of our actions and trials would be. It’s all cause and effect stuff, and it can be as relevant to design-fiction as you really want it to be. As long as there is a call for something, that something will arise.

Bruce Sterling emphasises the importance of diegesis in design fiction, implying a sense of actually experiencing the ideas rather than simply having them explained. It is like any Apple ad, which shows how the technology can be useful in everyday life, i.e. taking photos of our kids on the fly, using Siri to call our friends hands-free, searching for the nearest pub on the bus, paying our bills while waiting in line, all the kind of stuff we couldn’t dream of doing ten years ago, and there we see it, in the ads, being used just how we would use it in real life. Though it is often a lot faster on TV.

Anyway, how would Cassandra be represented? I could imagine it as an advertisement showcasing the comfort of living off-planet, enjoying the luxuries of a completely controlled environment, one that never rains, where your entire world is a few minutes away, where there is no crime due to resident pre-screenings, where the dangers of Earth are not present, so you know you aren’t doing any long term damage.

It’s all very idealistic, which annoys me. That’s probably why I killed everyone on board in my story. Good old Cassandra, always good for a laugh.