From Star Wars to Warhammer 40k and from Dune to Starship Troopers, something sticks out. Planetary Governments. More often than not, the politics behind the cool sword fights and bureaucracy behind the epic space battles get overlooked. This is because the interior design of a senator’s office is much less attention-grabbing than the trenches of an alien battlefield. Truthfully, however, the inner workings of a political movement and how it infects a populace could be great fodder for a story.

The idea of Sub-genres is what comes up here. Science Fiction, and speculative fiction more broadly, is usually hosted in the same aisles in bookstores. We, as readers and creators in the space, understand there is more nuance than that, however. We understand that some Sci-Fi stories will be about political intrigue on a galactic scale, while others will be war chronicles of fighting men and women doing heroic deeds on their far-flung battlefields. Even still, there are space operas that contain much of both of the aforementioned categories. If you dig down deep enough, however, you will find politics on the battlefields and battles raging in the space senate.

As the author, we get to decide how much of each is shown to the reader and why. That is the balance that I am here to talk about today. If you lack politics, it becomes mindless action page turners with little to no character. If you forget action, your story can get bogged down with speeches and exposition that lose readers. A realistic world has both.

The place where I often roll my eyes the hardest is when a book or franchise says, “Oh yes, this entire planet with billions of people is ruled by one government with no dissent.” That is just a plain lie that we are expected to just accept as readers. It’s a lie that you should avoid trying to feed your readers. How you do that is up to you. If world-building is not your strong suit, then I would definitely check out my other posts about that. Like this one! There is so much more to talk about here, but I am out of time today. Look for part two of this tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know ways you have made your sci-fi worlds more real in the comments below, and subscribe so you never miss a blog.