But the tropical ones are land leeches. They even drop on you from above. And the ricefield leeches are HUGE.

Oops…we seem to have got away from hovels…

Do you have any tips for writers who are not well versed in technology, but who want to write futuristic fiction without having a degree from MIT?

Be consistent. Your technology doesn’t necessarily need to be plausible from a scientific sense so much as it has to make sense on its own terms. You can invent a McGuffin to cover the big technological leaps, as long as you think through all of the implications.

Say you envision a future where some scientist has invented a machine to eliminate flies. Never mind how the machine works… how much does it cost? What does it look like? What effect does the disappearance of flies have on the food chain? Did the inventor of the machine become filthy rich? And so on.

And that would be a great lesson in worldbuilding…because going out into the wilds of the Rockies is a far cry from going out into the wilds of Jakarta, or Northern China, or Antartica, or central Africa, etc etc.

Katherine, I once read that someone riding into London in Elizabethan times on a hot summer’s day would see the cloud of flies over the city before they saw the buildings. Have NO idea if this was true or just something the writer invented.

Livestock was a part of everyday life for both rich and poor. Serfs had to raise meat animals for their lords’ tables, not that they were allowed to eat any part of them. The slightly better off poor would have a chicken or two for eggs. Yeoman farmers would have a pig, chickens, a plow horse or mule, and a milk cow at the least. All of these animals produce um well by-products. Said by-products attract flies by the hundreds, though it August it must have felt like thousands.

Even in the cities and towns, those who could afford it kept livestock, chickens, the occasional cow, and of course, the well-off had a team of horses. More by-products, more flies.

Erin, you might try going to your local library and checking out some books on science and tech for the General Reader. There are a quite a lot of them available.

You’ve made a good point about writing science fiction. However, if you want to write SF your technology has to be correct or the story falls flat even if it’s plausible. I’d love to write SF, but I’m not sure I could do justice to the technology. Do you have any tips for writers who are not well versed in technology, but who want to write futuristic fiction without having a degree from MIT?