One milestone that an only an author writing science fiction can understand, and that he or she both dreads and secretly longs for, is the moment when fact overtakes the fiction we write. Whether H.G. Wells, or Edgar Rice Burroughs or even yours truly, that moment is a gauge of both vision and comprehension. We dread it, because what we write is no longer special. We long for it because when that parity occurs, we are vindicated. We are no longer fiction writers. We aren't hacks. We are not storytellers. At that moment, we are visionaries. For just a moment today, I felt that.
I grew up in Green Country, an incredibly beautiful region of northeastern Oklahoma that borders parts of Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. It's also oil country. Tulsa was known as The Oil Capital of the World for most of the twentieth century. Geologists from all over the world still study there at the University of Tulsa.
In Warrior's Scar, book one of The Warrior Chronicles, I created The Memorial Sea. It is an inland sea that encompasses all of Green Country, and a large portion of the area around it. The sea was created when nearly three centuries of oil drilling and fracking, combined with an ignorance and then casual indifference toward their effects, a massive earthquake caused a complete collapse of the area's substratum. As the ground settled in the area and the water table rose, it created the sea almost overnight. Millions of people died, hence the name, and the face of the southern Midwest was changed forever. Which brings me to the point of this post.
Today, I was on my way to a basketball function and NPR had an interview with a researcher from the University of Oklahoma, talking about the recent surge of earthquakes in the area. There was a lot of science, a lot of oil history, and a lot of words that linked together really well, forming the basis for what happens in Warrior's Scar. Which I wrote last year, way before the interview today.
I'm not H.G. Wells, though I have read every word he has published. I'm also not Edgar Rice Burroughs or Gene Roddenberry. But like them, my vision has been validated. Maybe not on the same scale, but don't hold that against me. Today there was a great moment to me. A moment that assured me I am doing something right.
