“I keep flashing back to my experience after 9/11. Were you thinking about that when you wrote this piece?”

That was the feedback written at the end of the latest short story I submitted to my writing critique group.

Like most people alive on September 11, 2001 I remember the moment I realized it was no usual day. I was halfway between my science and social studies classes when the principal got on the intercom and told the teachers to turn on the classroom TVs. We had a substitute and watched the news through that whole class. My next class was home ec. Our teacher made us a deal that we could watch the news through the second half of the period if we spent the first half quietly working on our sewing projects. It was the most eerily voiceless class I’ve ever attended. She turned the TV on and we watched as the towers came down.

September 11th, 2001 was the day I learned the words/phrases: “Islam” “Osama Bin Laden” “World Trade Center” “Afghanistan” and several more which I now hear almost daily. Before that day, the only countries I’d learned anything significant about were those that bordered the US and Italy (due to my heritage). Like most of my generation, 9/11 was a major “coming-of-age” moment.

On the anniversary last year, the organizer of an online writing group I follow posted a picture of the NYC skyline and asked us if we’ve ever incorporated the event into our writing. “No” I thought. I mostly write science fiction. My stories are set centuries in the future, often in other star systems.

But then it hit me… I do write about 9/11. Almost all my stories are about 9/11. There’s an undeniable pattern in my fiction. Most of the narratives begin with an enormous, tragic event. The first novel manuscript I ever wrote started with the destruction of an entire planet and the loss of a billion lives. The same novel begins another character’s story arc with a nuclear explosion. I have a story about a memorial being constructed at the sight of a far-future industrial accident. Another story details the fall of a galactic civilization in the wake of a naturally-occurring shift in fundamental physics.

Obviously, this is not unique to my sci-fi writing. The story arc for season three of Star Trek: Enterprise is about humanity responding to a devastating surprise attack. 9/11 has clearly played no small role in our modern fascination with apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian stories.

Most of my stories fit together into a history of the future. This universe appears to have one theme weaved throughout: disaster. These stories usually describe human reactions to a disastrous event. The timeline is punctuated by these events, and every one of them is a reflection of 9/11.

But these stories do not tend to be pessimistic. Human failings and our worst nature are often the driving force of the plot, but I generally bring my main characters to a positive, if not ideal, resolution. This suggests that I subconsciously have a positive outlook on human potential.

My 12-year-old self saw not only horrors on that day, but also heroism. Bin Laden may have become the tyrant or extraterrestrial menace of my fictional universe, but the heroes I saw became its protagonists. The first responders and community leaders who stepped forward on 9/11 will always be the characters my stories honor.