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New writers often ask, "Where do you get your ideas?"

I usually reply that ideas are the easi est part of writing. The air is filled with ideas. Just look around you: Every person you meet is a potential character in a story; every interaction between people is a possible plot for a novel.

The German author Thomas Mann, who won the 1929 Nobel Prize for literature, said it best: "The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of an idea."

Let me give you an example of what I mean, based on my latest novel, "Titan."

Since 1988 I've been working on a loosely-connected series of novels that describe how the human race expands through the solar system.

This series, which my readers have dubbed "The Grand Tour," began with the novel "Mars." My intention has been to write realistic novels about who goes into space and why, what happens on Earth during this period of exploration and expansion, and — above all — what it would be like to be on Mars, or Venus, or any of the other worlds I've written about.

Probably the most beautiful planet in our solar system is Saturn, with its spectacular set of bright rings orbiting around it. Saturn is much bigger than Earth; it's the second-largest planet in the solar system, after Jupiter. It's also 10 times farther away from the sun than Earth.

In addition to those beautiful rings, Saturn has dozens of moons. More are being discovered every year. Its largest moon is Titan, which is the second-largest moon in the entire solar system.

Titan is much larger than our own moon — it's even bigger than the planet Mercury. Titan is the only moon in the solar system to possess a substantial atmosphere. In fact, Titan's atmosphere is 50 percent denser than Earth's at ground level.

That atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen, laced with methane and hydrocarbons such as methane, ethane and propane, plus nitrogen-carbon compounds such as hydrogen cyanide, cyanogens and cyanoacetelyne.

Shine sunlight on such an atmosphere and you get the same result you would in Los Angeles or Mexico City: photochemical smog, induced by solar ultraviolet light.

Titan is a smog-covered world. Its predominantly orange coloring is due to this smog, which blankets Titan and usually — but not always — prevents observers from seeing its surface.

It's an interesting place to set a novel, particularly since Titan's smoggy atmosphere resembles the conditions on Earth billions of years ago, when life began on our world.

There's one big difference, though: Titan's surface temperature averages minus 183 degrees Celsius (minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit). Titan is cold.

Could some form of life exist on Titan? No one knows — yet.

So there are some of the ideas that led me to write the novel "Titan." But those are only the background details, the scenery against which the story is played out.

To be an interesting novel, the story must feature interesting characters who are struggling to solve their per sonal problems. So: We have a man-made habitat that houses 10,000 people, placed in orbit around the planet Saturn.

A small cadre of scientists is among them. They want to study Saturn, its rings, it moons and, above all, they want to study Titan. The scientists believe that the rest of the men and women living in the habitat — the vast majority of those 10,000 souls — are there to support and service them, the scientific staff.

Most of those 10,000 couldn't care less about the scientists. They are exiles, dissidents and free-thinkers who have been banished from Earth by their various national governments.

In my "Grand Tour" novels, Earth has been hit by two calamities: a sudden and cataclysmic greenhouse warming that has raised sea levels to the point where most coastal areas around the world have been flooded, and a rise in authoritarian governments based on fundamentalist religious movements.

These exiles realize that the space habitat in which they live is all the home they're ever going to have. Physically, it's quite comfortable, its miles-long interior is landscaped beautifully and it's dotted with villages that enjoy all the modern conveniences.

Like people everywhere (including in Southwest Florida) most of these people take no interest in governing their community. They just want to be left alone so they can enjoy life. Which leaves the door wide open to the determined few who want to take political power into their own hands.

One issue they all face is population growth. Their habitat is strictly limited in its size and capacity for supporting its human population. Thanks to modern medical care and biological knowledge, people live healthy and active lives well past 100. In short, hardly anybody dies.

This means hardly anybody is allowed to have a baby. Will these people support a zero-population-growth law? If they don't, will uncontrolled population growth ruin their habitat's ecology?

Meanwhile, the scientists have sent a probe down to the surface of Titan, but the probe refuses to send data back to the scientists.

Why? What's caused this malfunction?

And then there's the question of Saturn's rings. All of the giant planets of the outer solar system have ring systems, but the rings of Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus are pitifully thin and dark.

Saturn's rings are so bright and big that they were discovered centuries ago, when telescopes were hardly more than toys.

Why are Saturn's rings so spectacular? What makes them so big and bright?

Those are some of the ideas that went into "Titan."

Of course, while I was working on the novel, NASA and the European Space Agency sent a probe to Saturn and even dropped a lander onto Titan's surface. I had to wait until I could see the results of that probe before I could finish writing the book.

The ideas are out there, waiting to be seized and used by the writer.

Turning those ideas into a novel that's interesting, even exciting — that's the hard part.

"Titan" is the 111th book by Naples resident Ben Bova. His Web site address is www.benbova.net.