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It's Hitchcock's Maguffins again.
The genre is useful in that it's flexible, you don't need 'research', it can be used as allegory, for political, spiritual, psychological, you name it, metaphors.
I mean, look at something like 'The Enemy Within' from ST TOS and you know the screenwriter was fresh from reading Carl Jung's theory of the shadow/ego. But if the audience just wants Klingons and phasers, then they ignore what it's really about. That can happen in any genre though.
The space stuff is only maguffins to enable the story to be told, the ideas to have a root. You can do the same with Westerns. The audience knows the formulae you start from.
The disadvantage is that the genre has limitations in terms of expectations. If people think it's all Daleks and robots, then they'll ignore the dystopias and the symbolism, where they might not in, say, an existential novel.
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Posted: |
Aug 12, 2014 - 5:35 PM
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By: |
Gary S.
(Member)
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Outgrow sci-fi (and fantasy fiction)....I'm 60, it ain't gonna happen. There will probably be a book by Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, EE Smith, Laumer, Burroughs, Sanderson, Tolkien, Jordan, Kurtz, McCaffrey, Bradley, or any of dozens of others on my read stack by bed whenever I die, which won't be anytime soon..
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Posted: |
Aug 14, 2014 - 8:30 AM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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Yes, a lot of science fiction isn't science fiction at all. Star Trek (which I love) has really nothing to do with science. Hundreds of planets, all within a short journey time, nearly all with a breathable atmosphere & gravity the same as Earth...& everyone speaking English! The hard fact about space travel is that it's very boring...& probably will never happen. In the past year there's been two programs about a possible voyage to Mars, & you know, it's not going to happen. There's a crew in a vessel about the size of the average living room for six months with nothing to do but absorb radiation & get cancer & watch their bones go to dust, & no one's figured out a way to take off from Mars...& it's so expensive, no one country can afford it. I think the favourite science fiction these days is everything going to crap, a virus, the Earth getting hit by a lump of rock, all the bees dying, something.
This has got me in the mood to start re-reading my favourite 70's science fantasy trilogy:
The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys/Synaptic Manhunt/The Neural Atrocity, by the late great Mick Farren.
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does anyone think that once you get older, you go past the date that many futuristic concepts were expected or suggested, and it makes you a little more realistic, maybe cynical - whereas when you are young the future holds more excitement, more imagination and possibilities and you are more open to flying cars and such like? Dunno. just chucking the idea out there.
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Posted: |
Nov 15, 2014 - 2:21 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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does anyone think that once you get older, you go past the date that many futuristic concepts were expected or suggested, and it makes you a little more realistic, maybe cynical - whereas when you are young the future holds more excitement, more imagination and possibilities and you are more open to flying cars and such like? Dunno. just chucking the idea out there.
Sure, I can go with that.
In my teens and early twenties, I was more into what I -- somewhat derogatorily -- call 'pointy ear sci fi'. These days, I'm not so much, and the only things in my past that I still hold on to and like somewhat (in this genre) are BABYLON 5 and STAR WARS.
STAR TREK, FARSCAPE, STARGATE: ATLANTIS etc. -- no, my adult cynical self has grown away from that. These days, I prefer more realistic stuff, sci fi that is very grounded in what exists today and just extends carefully from that. I'm a very serious person with absolutely no sense of humour, and prefer my films to take themselves equally seriously.
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I would rather say I reach an age where I go off straight action movies. I have reached that age now.
And most comedies too really.
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