When Gina was home recently, she spent the whole time on the couch watching cooking shows. Emeril, Rachael Ray, Iron Chef, cook-off specials, bake-a-cake-shaped-like-a-tree documentaries, you name it.
The other night I was watching something on the Sci Fi Channel and Anonymous Diane pointed out that I wasn't much different. Just better shows. (I don't think that was her word, to be fair.)
I like Sci Fi. Always have.
When I was a kid, I knew the title of every original Star Trek episode. I had a tricorder and communicator. (And I still think a cell phone company should make a phone that looks exactly like an original Trek communicator...) I would read at night after I was supposed to be asleep with the light from a phaser flashlight. So it's not new.
The first screenplay I wrote was sci fi. I saw two movies last year that really worked. On was The Constant Gardener. The other was Serenity. That led me to Firefly, which is the best television show I never saw on TV. This year, new shows (or new season's of old shows) I've watched include the sci-fi comedy Eureka and the sci fi noir Battlestar Galactica. (Which is nothing like the cheesy Galactica of my childhood. The beer-drinking woman in the picture is Starbuck this time around.)
Sci Fi is optimistic, even when the last reminants of the human race are being chased around the galaxy by machines. (A machine race with a monotheistic religion -- there is no God but God -- while the human still worship the ancient Greek deities.) It means we're still around, if nothing else, which I'd like to see. I'd like to think that as a species we're collectively smart enough not to blow ourselves up or completely destroy our planet, but there is precious little evidence to support either of those positions.
And that's what I like about sci fi. It requires optimism that's unsupported by evidence -- like faith in Heaven, the belief that the Cubs will win a World Series one day or the Raiders will ever win another game.
Here's another thing. If I'm out in the forest behind my house and crest a hill, I know what I'm going to see on the other side. But in any sci fi story, that's not true. Crest a hill and you could see an alien army, a Utopian city, a portal to another dimension -- anything you can imagine.
So as a genre, sci fi requires faith and imagination. I think that's not all bad.
Or it's possible I'm just a really big geek.
11 comments:
It doesn't take faith or imagination to know that you're a geek. A smart, loveable one, but certainly a geek.
Nah, what's interesting, and good, is how different genres float different boats. I marvel at writers who can create dialogue and characters that are authenitc, even in the midst of their small, souped up situations. The movie, "Little Miss Sunshine" is a good example. It's the best movie I've seen all year. Or how about that movie, "In America," about the Irish immigrants in New York? It's told from the child's point of view, and it gets it just right. I love that.
Yes, that last thing is a definite possibility...
What about the fact that in sci fi, despite the fact that we've managed to survive The Machines, or our own shortsightedness or whatever, only the technology has changed? We're still the same old flawed, self-centered humans we've always been. It's 50 or 100 or 500 years in the future, and we still can't get along with alien races, there are still poor planets and rich planets, war and really bad hair. Plus those ugly metallic suits we all wear; what's up with those?
PS, Hi Anonymous Diane!
There's a line at the end of Mission to Mars that acknowledges exactly that. That the worst of humanity survives with the best.
And for someone who lived through the '80s, I'm not sure you're in a position to criticize either hair or clothes!
Maybe the stories that speak to us say something about our archetype, or some such Joseph-Campbell thing. Some people love the big stories - remdemption, good-vs.-evil, the unlikely hero faced with huge stakes. Me, I like the small stories that look at how most of us live, just flawed little humans trying to live a decent life.
And maybe that's why I can write plots for shit. And Steve can. He knows how to make the stakes high.
Correction: I can't write plots for shit. This is crappy. There's no spell check on these blogs. There's no little cue thing that makes you read your message again before you send it. What's a flawed little human to do?
I like stories, big or small, with unlikely heroes -- teenage girls ridding the world of vampires, a guy who doesn't carry a gun but always outwits the bad guys with a paperclip and chewing gum, stuff like that. I guess it's because I like to think any ordinary person (like me) could be the one to change everything.
See -- faith and imagination!
BSG RULES! BSG RULES!
it's like mythology unfolding, for me. i'm astounded how much it's gripped me.
in the meantime, have you ever seen the "Trekkie" documentaries? in the second one they touch on the optimism that Star Trek gave fans who lived in commie block countries.
Haven't seen those, but I'll keep an eye out.
And for all my arguments about how sci fi is optimistic, Galactica is about the darkest, most morally challenging show on the air. Go figure.
Post a Comment