Predictability

When I was in high school, an English class was assigned the short story The Most Dangerous Game. The plot was, basically, that a malicious person had arranged to have humans let loose on his private hunting preserve, for his hunting pleasure. Early in the story, our teacher asked if we thought that the author survived. I said that he must have, else how could he have written the story? The teacher seemed - bemused - by that observation. Now I think that surely I could not have been the first student to make it, but that was his reaction. I was pleased with myself. Since then I've read other stories about which the same could be said, and since then I've come across ones where the author has figured out a way for the story to be told in spite of his own death. I wouldn't be surprised if they teach it in writing classes.

Right now I'm reading a science fiction novel by Jack McDevitt wherein an intrepid band is exploring a small planet that's going to be smashed by a collision with a much larger one. The lead character is a little nervous -- they're supposed to have about ten safe days, so she wants to leave the surface of the planet in about a week. They've just had an unexpected tremor hit the planet. One guy says it's nothing, kind of thing happens in California all the time, but you just know that it isn't nothing, it's the harbinger of bad news. And likely the character who made the it's nothing comment will die, or his girlfriend (also on the trip), or something. They'll be trapped, with no apparent way out. And yet at least one of them will probably get out, because the lead character is a recurring one from other novels. She could die, but then poof goes that series. I can't imagine an author liking that.

What gets me is not that something bad's going to happen to them. What gets me is that, even knowing all of this, I care about what happens to them.