Science My Science Fiction: The Future of the Deaf and Blind? by Adam Callaway

One of my favorite things about the nonstop progress of technology is how it assists the less fortunate to interact with the world on a more complete level. A lot of these technologies -- DARPA's advanced carbon-fiber limbs, implantable retinas, brain-computer interfaces -- try to correct disabilities so these people can live a "normal" live. But is this the best way?

This article is about a new way for deaf-blind people to communicate, and also to use the internet in a way that will only be native to them. It allows them to interact with non-disabled people using

Science Our Science Fiction: Vegetarians on Mars

According to RT, Elon Musk of Paypal / SpaceX fame wants to put a colony on Mars.  Musk's proposed city will help re-settle 80,000 people, run on sustainable technology (at least in part), and contain a population of -- you guessed it -- vegetarians.  I'm intrigued by this idea because it makes me wonder about the motives and possibilities of such a city.  What would compel Musk to narrow his focus only to vegetarians (or people willing to convert)?  What advantages would that provide a space-faring society?

Salad alien only eats saladses. Meats is gross.

If we lived in 1960, one might easily argue in favor of a vegetarian diet.  Presumably, Mars contains all the required components to maintain basic farming -- with a little work.  Maintaining

Question: What happens when laser pistols are everywhere?

The question is actually more complicated than the title suggests.  It reads as follows:

In a science fiction world where guns can be made of deadly lasers, pew pew pew, that you'd have to move at the speed of light to avoid, would there be a need for guns? I mean, if you got mad at someone and whipped out your laser gun, they could be dead before they heard the gun go off, sonic boom style. So... why guns?

I take as the underlying assumption here that such guns use realistic laser technology and not the sort of thing we see in science fiction from practically everything written in the 30s, 40s, and 50s to Star Wars to even the absolutely gorgeous trailer for the film adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.  In other words, lasers that likely make less noise than contemporary guns, have

Top 8 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 21st Century

Science fiction and fantasy have had a great first decade in the 21st century. Some of the best films and television shows in the history of the genre have appeared during this time, making sure that fans can fondly remember this decade as one of the best.

But the 21st century has also brought us some downright awful stuff. From The Matrix Reloaded to the Star Wars prequels, the 21st century is responsible for some of the worst SF/F moments ever. Here are eight of the most ridiculous of those moments (after the fold):

8. Durza's Gurgling Spell Yell -- Eragon
Think back to when you saw this movie. Remember the scene where Durza (Robert Carlyle) gurgles a long string of ridiculous words? These words: Anori Draumr abr Sundablaka it ator Virliger. Possibly the worst part of that entire movie, and that's saying a lot, because Eragon is terrible. Carlyle tries so hard to make it work, but you can see that at some point he gave up trying to take the movie seriously and immediately went for camp.

7. In the Name of the King -- In the Name of the King
Yes, I mean the entire movie. Why? Flying ninja sword lunges. Burt Reynolds as King. Matthew Lillard doing a really horrible British accent. The main character's name is Farmer, who...farms. Most importantly, however, this film single-handedly destroyed any respect I had for John Rhys Davies and every other serious actor in the cast. I'd love the movie more if the cast were made of pathetic has-beens from the 80s, all desperate to re-ignite their old careers, but In the Name of the King pretty much works in the opposite direction. This movie isn't even bad to the point of being funny. It's just bad. Vulcan bad. (I'd love to show you all a video of just how bad this movie is, but unfortunately all I could find were the trailers, which hardly demonstrate how ridiculous In the Name of the King is.)

6. Underground Nude Acid Rave -- The Matrix Reloaded
I'm not the only one to take issue with this scene from The Matrix Reloaded (I can't embed the video, unfortunately). That said, I have an entirely different take on why this scene is absolutely absurd. If humanity has been living underground in an attempt to hide from the machines, then wouldn't it make sense to make as little noise as possible so as not to be found? Why are any of the characters shocked that the machines found out where they live? You're running around banging huge drums and dancing around in a giant cavern. Sound resonates, and you'd have to assume the machines are smart enough to listen to vibrations in the ground. Maybe there's a reason why we ended up being enslaved by the machines: we're stupid as hell.

(Note: A number of people have questioned this one, and so I want to answer to it. While this particular scene is explained in the movie as an attempt to show that they're not afraid, one has to assume that they've always had those drums, because they don't explain where they came from. If you take that assumption to heart, then it's only logical that they use the drums, otherwise there's no reason to make them. So, the moment might be explained, but not the apparatus itself.)

5. Hayden Christensen in Any SF/F Production -- Star Wars, Jumper, etc.
Watch Attack of the Clones again. Now watch Jumper. See the same problems? So do I. Either someone in the editing room phoned it in, or somebody let Christensen have a seizure on camera for kicks. Any time this guy has shown up in an SF/F film, it's been an acting disaster. The thing is, all of these films have moments where you can see his actual ability shining through, but such moments are quickly glossed over by Haydenseizures.

4. Creepy Romance (and basically everything else in The Attack of the Clones except the end with the lightsabers and Yoda) -- Star Wars, Episode Two: The Attack of the Clones
I don't need to explain. These videos can do that for me.



3. Starbuck is an Angel -- Battlestar Galactica (New)
I didn't hate the finale as much as everyone else, but the one thing I didn't like was the mysterious disappearance of Starbuck. So much of what made Starbuck appealing as a character was lost in that moment. Starbuck is an angel sent to the colonies to destroy most of mankind (edit: not directly, as in the Cylons, but indirectly through the divine necessity of her entire purpose for existing) and then lead them to Earth, where she'll go "poof" and leave Apollo wondering what the hell happened? The audience saw that and started screaming "wtf." Too many questions unanswered, and a whole lot of questions reduced to weird religious mumbo jumbo that makes about as much sense as the Midichlorians in Star Wars. Maybe they'll get it right when they pull out that ridiculous movie reboot of Battlestar Galactica.

2. Future Spock -- J. J. Abrams' Star Trek
I don't even need to say anything. You just need to read this, this, and this.

1. The Name Change (like a sex change, but less acceptable) -- SyFy
Let's be frank: SyFy hasn't exactly been the bastion of science fiction television in the last ten years. They've consistently cut the science fiction out of their programming in exchange for crappy reality shows about BS...I mean ghosts, and they've produced more crappy TV movies than any other network in existence, without being smart enough to just stick Bruce Campbell in them all to save face. To give you an idea of how the programming has changed, I filched this comparison from Something Awful:

SciFi Channel Sunday schedule circa 1998
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Dark Shadows - Count Darcy cries about a dead pigeon.
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM The Incredible Hulk - Bruce Banner fights a racist sheriff.
11:00 AM - NOON Automan - Automan goes on a date with an air hockey table.
NOON - 1:00 PM Earth 2 - The survivors find a pickle in the desert, but it's evil.
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM Star Trek The Motion Picture - Kirk and Spock fight the Voyager probe.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Forever Knight - A vampire pharaoh pleads not guilty to racketeering.
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Sightings - An excitable white guy sees a UFO shaped like a helicopter.
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The gang watches Planet of the Hate Hutch. 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Highlander - A greasy Frenchman may be more than he seems.
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM The Prisoner - Number Six thinks he escaped, but it's part of a charity pageant for an ailing evil balloon.

SciFi Channel Sunday schedule circa 2006
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Ghost Hunters - The team drops a camera when they hear a sound.
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM Ghost Hunters - Kip's Infrared finds a cold spot on a wall.
11:00 AM - NOON Scare Tactics - Paid actors react to a man with a chainsaw at a restaurant.
NOON - 1:00 PM Extreme Championship Wrestling - Guys hugging on the floor.
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM Rage of the Python - A giant python escapes in a Manhattan high rise.
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Dragon Blast - Survivors of a dragon apocalypse struggle to retake earth..
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM Python Fighter - Dean Cain must battle in the post python-apocalypse.
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM Terror Turtle - Scientists mate a turtle with a dragon and release a trained giant python to hunt it down. Bruce Boxleitner must stop them both.

But to add insult to injury, the station changed its name from SciFi to SyFy. You all know this and you all probably hated it as much as every legitimate science fiction fan should. We don't hate the name simply because we want a station for science fiction. We hate the name because SyFy is like some sort of dyslexic nonsense you'd expect from a three-year-old or a mentally handicapped baboon, not from the only network for science fiction film. The sad thing is that our bitching and whining amounted to almost nothing. SyFy hasn't listened to the fans in years and they're not going to start now.

And that's it. So, what do you think are some of the most ridiculous moments in science fiction and fantasy film? Let me know in the comments!

38 Reasons Why Darth Vader is Better (and Cooler) Than Iron Man

io9 recently posted a list of 38 reasons why Iron Man is better than Vader. As a Star Wars fan, I am horribly offended. Tony Stark? Better than Vader? Pah! That's a load of crap, and here's why (more after the fold; click the read more):

1. Vader practically rules the entire frakking Galaxy. Stark can barely hang on to his own damned company.
2. Vader has the Force. Iron Man has...a pretty kickass suit that, but it wouldn't stand up against Force lightning or a Vader temper tantrum.
3. John frakking Williams. Yeah.
4. Vader doesn't have any STDs. Stark? Probably a few dozen. Maybe even some we haven't heard of yet.
5. Vader has a lightsaber.
6. And a spaceship.
7. And an army.
8. And cool bounty hunters like Boba freaking Fett.
   
9. And a frakking space station for a house.
10. And enough capital to build a second frakking space station when the first one gets blown up.
11. Vader doesn't have the U.S. government trying to take his shit.
    
12. Vader has a son who turns out to be kind of a badass Jedi. Stark has a few dozen illegitimate children who'll eventually come begging for college tuition.
13. Vader also has a daughter who also turns out to be kind of a badass. Read the books.
    
14. Vader says cool things like "the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
15. When Vader says stuff like #14, he's not bullshitting. And we know it. Stark is pretty much 95% bullshit. It's cute, but that 5% doesn't do much for his credibility.
16. Vader has a whole fleet of frakking chauffeurs. Hello? Did you see all the times he was ferried around by Imperial dudes in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi?
17. Vader builds complicated, advanced machines and computers at the tender age of 10.
    
18. Star Wars. Six movies. And the first film made double what Iron Man brought in after being adjusted for inflation. All that without having a pre-established brand. Yeah.
    
19. When Vader designs an artificial intelligence, it's actually useful. Remember that arm droid thingy in Stark's garage? Now that's annoying as shit...
20. And Vader's artificial intelligences are insanely complex. C-3PO? Speaks just about every language ever invented. Yeah, what do you say to that, Stark?
21. Vader doesn't need a stupid super suit to jump 100 feet. He can just Force jump that shit.
22. And Vader can sense danger and emotions and loads of other crazy things that you didn't think could be read. Why? Because he has the frakking Force. Magic, fools. Magic.
23. James Earl Jones.
24. Vader has his own theme song.
25. Vader flies around in Star Destroyers. Stark has a private jet, which is cool, until you realize that it can't go into space, can't go into hyperspace, and is basically cannon fodder for anything with guns...
26. Vader can stop laser beams with his hands.
27. Vader's enemies are actually quite competent, which means he actually has to do some real work. Stark's first enemies in the first Iron Man movie are so stupid they don't even realize he's building a freaking super suit in their cave...
28. When people fail Vader, he chokes them to death. None of that goofing off crap with him.
29. Vader owns the military. He doesn't have to impress them to get their money.
30. Vader chops off his son's hand, knowing it's his son, all to prove a point.
31. Vader has no qualms about striking down his old man mentor. Why? Because Vader is a badass and doesn't take crap from nobody.
32. As far as we know, Vader doesn't have goo inside his chest.
33. On top of that, Vader's chest also isn't a damned Operation board game.
34. Vader can rap.
35. Vader is one of the most quoted fictional characters ever. "Luke, I am your father..." That's right.
36. When he dies, he gets to become a cool ghost thing, where he'll spend eternity hanging out with his friends. Stark will just be dead in a ditch somewhere. Maybe he'll go to Heaven, but probably not.
37. Vader can dance. No speculation. He can dance.
    
38. He's Darth freaking Vader. Why do you need 38 reasons to understand this?

There. Problem solved.

Science Fiction and Fantasy in Airports

As promised, I do have something interesting to point out about the presence of science fiction and fantasy in airports, and something that might be a good indicator of the power of books among travelers.

First things first, I can honestly say that I've seen a significant increase in the number of book-specific shops in airports. I don't know if this is national or international, but I've traveled a little bit over the last few years and I have noticed two things: 1) that there are more book-specific shops springing up all over the place, and 2) that some areas are insanely more book-friendly than others (St. Louis and Atlanta, for example, have a lot of book shops and places that carry books).

But what is more interesting than this is how strong of a presence science fiction and fantasy have. When you walk into a book-specific shop, there is almost always a section specific to science fiction and fantasy (and a section for YA, which is usually loaded to the teeth with fantasy titles). Sometimes the section is quite small, and other times it's about the same size as all of the other sections (non-fiction, general fiction, and so on).

The only downside to this is that these shops have a tendency to carry very little in terms of new work, which means that many of these SF/F sections are more like the classic literature section that most of these places have. It's unfortunate, but there must be a reason for it; you don't carry old SF/F (as in classic SF/F) if you're not selling it. This isn't to say that these stores don't carry newer titles; they do, but they typically only carry the more prominent new titles, such as works from various high-profile urban fantasy authors or big names in SF literature. But, what's to complain about? They have SF/F in the bookstores in airports!

Now that I've pointed out the more obvious aspects of SF/F's presence in airports, I think it's worth noting the much more hidden and telling presence: book sections within non-book-specific shops.

While I was in St. Louis a few weeks back, I decided to check out this little tech shop (headphones, phones, DVDs, games, things like that--InMotion Entertainment, I think) in the airport and was surprised to discover that they had a book section that was not only SF/F friendly, but possibly one of the best SF/F book sections I have seen for the size (four shelves no more than three feet wide). What was so special about it? The titles they carried represented a wide range of unique titles you might not find in your local bookstore, and all of the books had gorgeous covers. They had, for example, Paul McAuley's Gardens of the Sun:
They had loads of other titles too, many of which I hadn't heard of until then and most of which looked fascinating (yes, I've heard of McAuley's work, but I didn't write down the titles of all the others, and I've since forgotten them). I might have bought a book or two if I hadn't already spent over $100 on books during the PCA/ACA conference. The selection was simply fantastic. If you wanted something new and a little less popcorn-y, then you'd have to go to this shop.

The point of all of this is that airports are incredibly SF/F friendly. While the selection is not always the greatest (depending on the airport), there are almost always SF/F titles somewhere. I'm not sure what this says about our culture. These stores don't carry SF/F if it doesn't sell, so people must be requesting and buying the stuff. Do SF/F books make great travel reads in the same way that others genres have been for decades? Perhaps.

What do you think?

J. J. Abrams' Star Trek: An Addendum (to my review)

Some time ago I posted a scathing review of the new Star Trek movie. That post has since become one of biggest traffic and comment drivers on this blog. Thinking back, I do have some additional thoughts on the movie, and one thought in particular that I think may explain more about why I really dislike the newest film.

I am fully aware that time travel has been a staple within the Star Trek universe, what with the fifth movie having a plot centered entirely around that subject (the one with the whales is the fifth, right?). But what concerns me most about the newest Star Trek movie is that its use of time travel is essentially a non-starter. What do I mean by that? The problem with the newest movie is precisely that its time travel narrative essentially makes the entire movie pointless. If it is that easy to manipulate the course of time, then what is the point of telling a story in this universe? Some new writer could come along and rewrite the entire universe again just so we have something "fresh" and "new" to work with. And in another ten, the same thing (or maybe forty would be the more appropriate number, since that's sort of how long it took to get this reboot).

What about the characters? They become meaningless too, because nothing they do actually matters. It can simply be rewritten. Some characters might not exist at all and some will be replaced. This is the problem with time travel narratives as a whole. Back to the Future only works because it makes fun of itself; the series is centered around a purely comical farce and doesn't take itself too seriously because of that. But Star Trek is not a comedy, nor based in a universe centered on a farce (at least, it's not supposed to be). Star Trek takes itself fairly serious, because it should be a serious endeavor; the shows and movies try to address a possible future, not a farcical one (can you really take seriously a time machine built into a DeLorean or, dare I say, a hot tub?).

This fact is what bothers me the most about the newest Star Trek. It is too easy and simple to rewrite the course of history, to rewrite characters and plots and entire populations of people (you can now destroy planets, never mind that the very concept of one ship taking out an entire advanced civilization is so mind-bogglingly idiotic it hurts to think about). If Abrams wanted to rewrite Star Trek, he should have ignored time altogether. Just rewrite it. Take the old, update it, make it flashier, stronger, more character driven, and so on. Don't establish a precedent for the pointless.

Or, perhaps the better idea would be to ignore the standard cast of characters and start something completely new. It's yet to be done. Nobody has started a Star Trek movie with an unknown group of characters (or at least a group that hasn't been talked much about within the various series) and spawned a series of films about them. What a better way to reboot a franchise than to start clean!

But maybe that's why I don't make movies. Originality and logic seem to have fallen to the wayside in Hollywood.

Thoughts? Opinions?

The West, Science Fiction, and No Future

Over at Genreville (on the Publisher Weekly's blog), Josh Jasper asks a very intriguing question:

Perhaps the future really belongs to people who’re hungry for it, not the ones who take it for granted. Does western culture take the future for granted these days, whereas rising cultures don’t?

I think this really depends on who you talk to. Scientists, by and large, would likely take the future very seriously, and many geeks and technology-oriented individuals consistently display their love of the present and the future of the industry (in technology, of course, thinking about the future in logical terms is quite impossible, since the industry is shifting so rapidly that one can't be expected to keep up).

But scientists, geeks, and technology-oriented people are not the majority of the population in the West. They're a minority; a fairly vocal minority (at least it seems so in the 21st century), but a minority nonetheless. Most of America (and other Western countries, I would assume) is fairly introverted, and I don't mean that in a negative way. Most of us have to be, particularly now in this difficult recession. The future of things like space travel (kind of a thing of the past, really) holds no weight in a culture struggling to keep jobs, find jobs, pay bills, survive, and be happy (whatever that might entail).

I think the issue here isn't that we take the future for granted, but that most of us (obviously not myself) see no value in much of what Jasper is talking about. Yes, it has value. Absolutely. I would be a lying scumbag if I said that the future of space travel (near future) has no value, or that people aren't excited about the futures of medical technology. The problem seems to be that, in the west, so much of our daily lives don't feel as though they are influenced by the things that used to be the future or by what will eventually be our future. We don't make an A to B connection between, say, the guy who predicted the cell phone in a science fiction novel or movie to the product itself. We benefit, most certainly, but the connection is not made explicit in our daily lives. This is a particular problem with space travel, as mentioned earlier, because as much as space travel is wonderful and has taught us so much about the universe, our planet, and even ourselves and our fellow critters, most people down on the ground and outside of the scientific and technology-oriented communities don't see the benefit.

And, countries that are now getting into the technology world seem more excited because, in that initial boom, it is exciting. When the Internet first started exploding in households, that was a big deal in the United States. Same with the car, the cell phone, and so on. But normality eventually reduces that to, well, normality. We take for granted such things because the value decreases with the increase of acceptance in culture.

How does this translate into written science fiction (something Jasper brings up as clear separation between the West--who seems more focused on near future dystopia and far future impossibilities--and the non-West--with a focus on the excitement of the technological revolution)? Well, you could argue that all the problems I've discussed above have led to a public disinterest in that excitement. Space travel isn't exciting to most. It's mundane at best, and worthless at the worst (I disagree, but that's me, and I'm not in that community of naysayers and for-granted-takers). The technological revolution is, in a way, over for us, and thinking about a future where we're doing basically what has already been done, just on a grander scale, isn't necessarily appealing or exciting. The future is, perhaps, mundane in the West for those who fail to see its value in their daily lives (not because they're stupid, but because we have done a piss poor job of instilling that love and excitement one needs to make light of the present).

So, certainly we take the future for granted (I'm intentionally conflating the future and the present here). In some ways, that's a bad thing. How do we get that back into our culture and our science fiction (it's there, just marginalized)? I don't know. I'm not sure we can, at least not on the scale that would make for meaningful change. The inevitable future of cultural consciousness, at least as I see it, is that every country eventually reaches the point of mundanity about the future. For now, the non-West is booming with excitement because, well, to finally get your own space ship in space or to do all these new, futuristic technological wonders that you've yet to do (even though others have) is exciting. Wouldn't it be exciting if tomorrow was the first time the United States put a man into space, or that someone had thought of the idea in a book and it was the first time for us, ever? Of course! But that's not us. We've done it already, and the future/present isn't offering something tangible for the masses to demonstrate that there's still something to be that excited about.

But, enough about what I think. What about you?

How (Really) Thinking About Star Wars Can Make You Feel Uncomfortable (i.e. Terrorists!)

How do you feel about terrorism? You don't like it very much, do you? Most of us don't, and for good reason. It's bad, right? No matter what! Damn those evil terrorists!

On the opposite end of things, there's Star Wars. Most of us like that, right? Well, at least the originals. The prequels have really divided us Star Wars geeks...

Now, what if I was to tell you that your hatred of terrorists is directly contradicted by your love of Star Wars? Stay with me. You see, Star Wars (the movies only) is basically a giant high five to domestic terrorism. You'd never know it if you didn't dig in and think deep (the show, after all, does such a fine job painting the Rebels as the good guys). Think of Star Wars in terms of its internal biases:

• The Rebels are the focus characters. With the exception of Darth Vader, there are few, if any, Imperial focal points throughout the series. Figures like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc. are our heroes, and unabashedly so -- watch the first movie again and tell me they're not unreserved heroes.
• The Light Side of the Force is pitted against the Dark Side, and, thus, the good side is pitted against the evil side.
• We're told that the Empire is evil. Sometimes we see it commit evil, but the assumption left to be made by us is that they are only capable of evil. What isn't shown is actually quite shocking: infrastructure, culture, etc. The Imperial culture is militaristic, with an Emperor at the head giving all the major orders. But what about the normal folks living in the Empire? Again, we're left with a biased view, because those planets we are shown tend to be outer world, low-resource, or near-inhospitable places where outlaws have lived pre- and post-Empire, and where we see the failures of colonialism most pronounced. What of the inner planets like Coruscant, etc.? In the prequels we have a good idea that these places are technologically advanced, culturally driven, and prosperous. If you really think about what is shown to us, you have to wonder how much of that is truly the mark of an evil "nation" or "empire," and how much of it is simply an "empire" gone somewhat awry, but still a few shades short of the extreme evil that we are told it represents.

Inevitably, as I briefly touched on above, there is a lot left out of Star Wars in terms of what it doesn't tell us or intentional leads us to avoid thinking about. Such as:

• The Rebels are terrorists. They periodically infiltrate the Empire with spies, attack convoys, invade Imperial prisons to liberate criminals against the Empire (yes, Princess Leia is a criminal), etc. The fact that the Rebels almost immediately resort to violence (albeit in a seemingly toxic political environment) is rather telling here. Am I suggesting that violence against the Empire is inherently bad? No, but the problem is that the visual given to us doesn't provide context to understand the motivations, at least not on a comprehensive level (superficially we are conditioned to hate the Empire).
• As I mentioned above, and what is relevant to the point preceded this one, the complete lack of Imperial culture within the films essentially leaves an entire side of the coin unseen. This leads us to the following point.
• Because we only see the militaristic sides of both the Rebels and the Empire (the prequels only show us a pre-Empire galaxy), we have no idea how these two groups are seen in the context of society. Are the Rebels viewed as a good thing, even secretly, among the citizens of the Empire? What about the Empire?

While it is certainly relevant to recognize the impetus behind the Rebels' actions, it doesn't hide the fact that whatever good intentions there may be, they are still engaging in what we would call terrorism today. Think of it this way: to the people who support Al Qaeda, they are doing a good thing; likewise, to the people who support the Rebels, they are also doing a good thing. It comes down to perspective, and when you are on the outside, as we are, you can think objectively about the reality that Star Wars proposes. That reality is one where terrorism is something to root for, where good and evil are clearly defined, and where, inevitably, the folks we think are the good guys always win. While the Al Qaeda analogy might not hold up for most, it functions well enough to demonstrate how good and evil are defined by both context and perspective, both of which we cannot ignore here, even if the movies want us to for the sake of its internal logic.

But ask yourself this the next time you watch the original Star Wars movies: are the militaristic and "evil" elements of the Empire the only things severely damaged by the end of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi? Or is it possible that the collateral damage from everything the Rebels have done is in fact far more devastating than leaving the Empire in control in the first place?

Scifi Squad's Top Scifi Rapist

Last month, Scifi Squad posted a top ten list of scifi couples. The usual suspects show up there (Han and Leia from Star Wars), with a few modern additions (Zoe and Wash from Firefly and WALL-E and Eve from WALL-E). But then there's #3: Rick and Rachael from Blade Runner.

I wasn't aware that being a rapist made you one half of an awesome scifi couple. But maybe the Scifi Squad folks don't remember the scene where Rick Deckard throws Rachael against the wall after she tries to leave, and then forces himself upon her (she cries in that scene, by the way) while terrifying her into telling him "she wants it." It wasn't hidden. The scene is pretty damned clear: at best, Deckard is an abusive son of a bitch; at worst, he's the worst kind of rapist you'd expect to see in a Lifetime movie.

They're reasoning?

Between filming two parts of his memorable Star Wars romance, Harrison Ford fell in love with a replicant. That's the last thing you'd expect from the world-weary Rick Deckard, who specializes in terminating "skin jobs," but the heart wants what the heart wants, and the cool, classic beauty of Rachael (Sean Young) sneaks through his defenses, until he's doing everything within his power to keep her alive.

Did they see the same movie I did? He hardly does anything for Rachael. Yes, at the end of the movie he takes her away, but that's the only moment where Deckard really does anything for her (rather than for himself). Throughout most of the movie he is either screwing with her mind (i.e. telling her she's a replicant and that all her memories, which she thinks, at that point, are hers, are in fact fabrications), killing her kind, or forcing himself upon her. One shouldn't forget that the world Deckard has come to know pretty much allows him to get away with doing whatever he wants to the so called "skin jobs." I wonder if a little of that has rubbed off into the real world...

Two thumbs up for rapists, I suppose.

A New SF Manifesto of Bologna: Jetse de Vries and the Literature of Change (Part Three)

Now for the final post in my response to Jetse de Vries' post. You can read the previous two parts by clicking the following links: part one; part two.

Here goes:

Point Five – SF dismisses actual science

This one is easy to deal with: what consumers want is what they get. You want more SF that deals realistically with all aspects of science (even the aspects that most readers don’t know about anyway)? Well, then you have to change the public. Good luck with that. If scientists knew how to change the public’s view of science enough to make them want to change how we teach science in school (and thus affect change on science literacy), then they’d probably have done it already. Consumers don’t know the vast majority of the actual rules of science; SF writers tend to know this. Some of them want accurate science; some of them don’t. You tell me which way works best.

Now, we can moan and groan about how this is terrible and oh so sad, but that’s not something consumers give a flying fig about. Why? Because they don’t read SF to be educated about physics or chemistry or what have you. They read SF to be entertained. The ones who read SF for accuracy are a minority. That’s not to say that accurate SF can’t work, just that consumers generally can’t tell the difference between what is right and what is not. Don’t believe me? Take a camera and a microphone to the streets of any major city and start asking people either whether they care if the science is accurate or whether or not they know the basics of science. I guarantee you that most people (i.e. most consumers) will not have a clue.

It is not SF's job to educate people.

Point Six – SF isn’t relevant (enough)

Never mind that de Vries contradicts himself on this point (earlier he says that SF doesn’t really deal with present worldly concerns, but then here he says that it does; maybe he should make up his mind). What is important here is the whole point of the optimistic anthology he’s been working on: SF is so depressing and doom and gloom and sad and boohoo. SF has no solutions. It’s just about how things go from bad to worse. My question is: does de Vries actually read books, or does he just make this stuff up as he goes?

Of course things go from bad to worse. That’s what makes a novel tick. You can’t have a story that goes from good to gooderer and expect anyone to pay attention. That’s the kind of crap that keeps five-year-olds entertained during the day while their parents are cleaning the house. That’s what makes Barney, the Teletubbies, and Blue's Clues work for kids and not for adults. The only way literature for older kids and adults works is if it goes from good to bad to worse to better. That’s how it works.

The whole doom and gloom proclamation, however, is remarkably narrow-minded. Maybe if all you ever read are SF novels about doomsday futures you’d get a bit bothered, but this all reads to me as a desperate need on the part of de Vries to actually get out there and do some more reading. Either he has been incredibly isolated where he lives or he’s just never picked up the right books, because all this talk about how most SF is about how the future is all bad (and not good) is like saying that all football games are about hitting other people for the fun of it. Hardly.

There are plenty of science fiction writers who are imagining futures that have problems that get resolved. They don’t always get fully resolved (after all, a lot of SF deals with planet- or multisystem-wide problems), but there is usually a significant leap in the happy direction at the end (the world is saved, the characters we’ve rooted for finish a mission, or bring down and evil dictator, or whatever—the examples are endless). The doom and gloom stuff is a particular brand. We call them dystopias, and they’ve been around for quite a long time.

And it is here again that de Vries demonstrates his complete ignorance of the real world. SF is supposed to “get off its arse” and “be totally open to outside influences and other cultures, and get involved with proactive thinking, proudly using science, about the near future.” Just before that little quote, however, de Vries points to something said by Athena Andreadis about the fall of science within the mainstream (political and social) in the U.S. Somewhere in there de Vries has a little disconnect. This is what he is saying:

SF should further ostracize itself by becoming more and more about real world science, despite the fact that the general public (i.e. consumers) is scientifically illiterate and that such illiteracy is unlikely to change any time soon.

Yeah. Smart. Let’s make SF more and more about stuff that the general public clearly doesn’t give a crap about. Don’t get me wrong; I agree. I’d like my SF to be more accurate at times, but to assume that this is going to help SF in any way is absurd. People do not give a shit. If they did, scientists would be revered for being totally awesome and we’d all be living in a world that reminds us, surprisingly, of an episode of Sliders (you know, the one where Quinn’s twin in another dimension is both a science wiz and on a Wheaties box, and everyone seems to get off on the whole science thing, with Einstein being the equivalent of Elvis). Boy would that be one heck of a fantasy world.

That’s all I have to say on that. As much as I’d like to get on board with all this, I feel like it’s doing nothing but proposing a lot of ideas that sound good, but in practice could literally destroy the SF genre. This whole “optimistic SF” thing is not necessarily a new idea (“optimistic SF” has been around for a while), but certainly new in the sense of a collected entity. And it’s untested. We don’t know how well the general public will take this, or whether it will do SF any good at all. If de Vries honestly thinks his little movement is going to bring the readers in by the thousands, then he’s living in a magical place I wish we all could live in (it feels a little like Brave New World, to be honest, with all that happy injected right into the bloodstream).

There are good ideas in here, but even a good idea can be devastating when combined with a lot of bad ones. Whether or not the de Vries’ Shine anthology will be any good is yet to be seen. Maybe it will come and go just like the whole Mundane SF movement and we’ll be back to square one, with lots of talk about the death of SF (which, let’s face it, is having one of the longest deaths of anything, considering that every month holds a new funeral) and no useful solutions.

P.S.: Brokeback Mountain is not a Western. It’s a movie set in the West, but it is not a Western. If you’re going to use something as an example that makes SF look silly, at least get your example right. A Western is a story set in the western United States during the period of expansion and exploration (i.e. set in the Old West). It’s not gay cowboys on a Ranch in the 60s (or whatever year that movie was set in). For the record, Brokeback Mountain was a fantastic movie, but it’s not a Western. Also, there are writers in SF who are dealing with LGBT issues. A lot of them. There's a whole award geared towards recognizing such works. So, again, SF is dealing with real world issues and not at all as irrelevant as de Vries would have us think. Nice try, though.

A New SF Manifesto of Bologna: Jetse de Vries and the Literature of Change (Part Two)

I started this series of posts the other day and will now continue. You can read part one here and part three here.

Point Three – SF is WASP-ish

By that, de Vries means that SF allows for the perpetuation of white-privilege, which is true on some level, but also somewhat ignorant of what WASP actually stands for (historically speaking). He uses this to point at the problem of international SF to get any play in the Western market, which is also true on a lot of levels, but once again misses a very important problem: translations. First off, the Western world speaks English (mostly), and, thus, only reads in that language. You can’t expect writers from China to have much hold on the Western market without their work being in English.

What's wrong with that? There isn’t much of a market for translations in most of the literary markets to begin with. While there are translations that do quite well, there are also lots of translations that don’t, and expecting publishers to take on the burden of translating work that will likely lose them income is like expecting football players to try to be as graceful as ballerinas on the field while simultaneously making big plays. You find a way to make the market (i.e. the consumers) interested in translated fiction, and you’ll have solved this problem entirely. Right now, that hasn’t happened.

However, de Vries is correct that SF probably should be more inclusive of non-standard (i.e. white) characters and themes, but that is also true of a lot of genres (most literary forms should be multicultural, not necessarily universally, but certainly more frequently).

For the record: I actually wish more works were translated into English, particularly from China, because I’m curious about what is being written out there, but I also understand that I am a minority in the market. The people who control what gets produced by publishers are the people who put books on the bestseller’s list, generally speaking (yes, I know this is not true of everything).

Point Four – SF is commercially dead

This is where I think the most tired arguments are being presented. Perhaps the funniest part of de Vries’ discussion of the commercial death of SF is that he uses as an example a book written over twenty years ago and associated (or started, rather) with a genre that has, for the most part, actually experienced commercial death (it didn’t truly die, but it certainly ceased to be a major player and has since been consumed by other forms of SF). So, his example of “risk-taking SF” is a book that represents a genre that is already dead, and this is what SF should become? (He’s talking about Neuromancer, in case you didn’t read his post.)

Let me rephrase: de Vries thinks that SF doesn’t take enough risks (it does, but nobody buys the books that take a risk, apparently, and consumers seem far more interested in re-hashes of the stuff that sells in the theaters, which is true), and so his solution is to follow the lead of other seemingly dead-end subgenres in order to make SF wonderful and vibrant again. Brilliant idea. Let’s kill SF while its still standing and feign shock when it stops breathing.

For the record, William Gibson actually thought taking on the label “cyberpunk” was a horrible idea. He said as much in an book signing in Santa Cruz some time back. See, Gibson is not a moron; he knew that cyberpunk would be short-lived, and it was. The result? Gibson survived because he refused to take on the title and continued writing in and outside of that genre, and the vast majority of the other “cyberpunks” disappeared entirely (with the exception to a handful of authors who managed to get a hold in other subgenres).

The thing is, SF is taking risks. Many writers of non-tie-in SF are doing exactly what de Vries wants the genre to do and they either sell very well (Robert J. Sawyer) or not. Some have tried to revitalize some of the old gosh-wow elements of golden age SF (John Scalzi and Tobias Buckell) and a lot are simply going with what works: tie-in fiction and space opera.

SF, contrary to what de Vries seems to think, is also tackling the modern world in a future context. Kim Stanley Robinson and many others have written on climate change and there are authors today tackling everything from the potential ramifications of a Chinese superpower to the rise of a radical religious movement here in the States and elsewhere. I don’t know where de Vries has been living, but he’s certainly not on the up-and-up in the SF genre (I’m not even on the up-and-up and I seem to have a clearer picture of what is going on).

The problem? He expects the genre to tackle real-world dystopic situations with puppies and flowers. Screw realism. Screw what might actually happen to a world struck by rapid, unstoppable climate change. No, we should paint it all pretty and make it a giant masturbatory scientific orgy in which the conflict is little more than “how do we fix it / oh, let’s do that / but it’s hard / it’s okay, we’ll manage / yippee.” Well, if that’s the kind of SF de Vries wants, you can count me out.

In fact, what SF should probably be doing is splitting in two, with the “serious” side pulling out all the stops and coming up with the nifty ideas, the harsh realities, and the hardcore SF we’ve come to love, and the more flashy side exploding Star Wars style with as much escapist fantasy as humanly possible. He (de Vries) thinks the second part is a bad thing, and you have to wonder why. What could possibly be bad about SF doing exactly what all literature should: entertain. Consumers want this; publishers are giving it to them (kind of). Get over it.

The only thing that actually makes sense in all of this is that maybe SF should be marketing itself more adequately to the large female reading population. But, again, there are no solutions. Just more doom and gloom from Mr. de Vries (SF is failing cause it’s not doing X, but I won’t tell you how to fix it).

Part three will be coming soon. For now, I'd like to hear from you. Let me know what you think (whether you agree or disagree) in the comments.

A New SF Manifesto of Bologna: Jetse de Vries and the Literature of Change (Part One)

(You can read parts two and three at the following links: part two; part three.)

I struggled for hours on how to respond to Jetse de Vries’ post on whether science fiction should die. Part of the problem with the post is that it’s just another re-hash of several tired, inaccurate, and as-yet-properly-researched arguments we’ve all heard before. How do you respond to something that is saying the same thing over and over while simultaneously ignoring dozens of counter arguments that are not illegitimate or capable of being reduced to “part of the problem?”

But, having thought about this, I think I know what it is that bothers me so much about his arguments about SF: they lack the ingenuity and strength that have made science fiction as a literary genre (and now a visual medium) so important and groundbreaking in the history of literature. It’s precisely because he is re-hashing tired arguments and pontificating about things that would be downright devastating to a genre he claims is having so many problems that I have an issue with de Vries’ arguments (SF is not actually having that many problems, but hey, if we say it is over and over, maybe it will become true, right? He also thinks that SF is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Forget all those bestselling Star Wars novels and Alastair Reynolds and what not; totally meaningless, the whole lot). That’s how I’m going to respond: by de-constructing de Vries’ arguments to point out what exactly is wrong with what he is saying and how it will do nothing but irreparable damage to the genre.

(This will be broken up into three parts, because there’s a lot to be said, and I wouldn’t want to put you through reading 4,000 words of rant in one go.)

Point One – SF should be the literature of change

One of the things de Vries proposes is that SF should stop calling itself the literature of ideas (I disagree) and should instead become the literature of change, an concept that has no business being applied to SF as a genre. Changing SF from being about ideas to being about change is ridiculous on two levels:

1. His reference to addressing the supposed racism and general non-inclusive nature of SF is true of almost every single genre of written literature being produced today, regardless of the number of awards won by people of color and women within other genres. Hell, it’s true of every single entertainment medium. I’ll mention this later, but the simplistic route everyone takes to proclaim SF racist works for romance, mystery, general fiction (literary or what have you), movies, television, etc. Trying to say that SF should change its mission statement because of this is not saying anything new, and it’s not saying anything revolutionary either.

2. The idea that SF should be about change internally (i.e. in what it’s talking about) is like saying that SF should become the liberal scientist version of a preacher. Readers are not interested in being told “this is how we fix the world, yippee” anymore than they are interested in having their pastor come unannounced into their homes to tell them how to repent for their sins. If that’s not what this whole optimistic SF manifesto bologna is calling for, then they need to rework how they present their little movement; right now, it sounds like they want SF to become exactly what nobody wants (and I’ll talk about that some more later, too).

Point Two – SF is racist (sorta)

Well, we’ve heard this argument before, and it wasn’t (necessarily) any more true back then than it is now. Is there a problem of under-representation of people of color (and women) both as characters and authors in SF? Of course. Is this somehow indicative of institutionalized racism in SF? Nope. In fact, what de Vries and everyone else who has claimed that SF is racist miss are the real questions we should be asking:

How many SF books are written by people of color and how many have people of color (or women) as significant characters?

How many women and people of color submit SF manuscripts to publishers? (Nobody has an answer for this, and any time you ask you either get silence or someone blames you for contributing to the problem; honestly, if you’re going to talk about institutionalized racism in SF publishing, you have to have all of the data to support it.)

What is the ratio of submissions and publications by people of color and women in the various publishing industries?

There’s a lot of talk over at de Vries’ post about the Nobel Prize and the Man Booker Prize, both of which are irrelevant without appropriate correlating data. Has anyone actually bothered to understand the social and statistical conditions of the SF genre? No. This is why I’m tired of seeing this argument. If you think SF is racist, fine, but I’m less inclined to believe you if you’re unwilling to actually do the work necessary to actually prove that. Perhaps the problem with SF is precisely that everyone says it’s racist, and so people of color and women typically avoid it. After all, if people kept saying “that genre is racist,” would you continue writing fiction in that genre and submitting? Taken another way, if everyone told me that SF wasn't for men, and that no men ever get published in SF, etc., I think I'd have a harder time justifying writing in that genre (I'd then write fantasy).

I get the frustration, but it’s far more frustrating to want to actually affect change when nobody is a) providing the answers to do so (de Vries does not; he just says the same things that everyone else has said, without actual solutions, ironically enough); and b) actually understanding the larger picture (again, de Vries is not doing that either, but is instead saying the same things we’ve heard all year, all of which have done nothing to actually change the industry, and all of which will never do anything so long as everyone who holds these opinions is so shortsighted).

The problem with all the shorthanded ways people go about proclaiming racism in SF is that they are inherently racist notions. Nobody bothers to ask the questions above because they are tough questions, ones without immediate answers. It’s so much simpler to say “well, there are no African American authors in SF this year, so the industry is racist.” It doesn’t matter if a) there were only three African Americans who submitted to SF publishers in 2009; or b) there were no good manuscripts by African Americans submitted to SF publishers in 2009. It also doesn’t seem to matter that it is incredibly difficult to know whether someone is a particular race based on the information given in a query (nobody can magically assume that one’s name is a “Black name” any more than someone can assume a name is a “White name”—there are people of all colors who are named John Smith, for example), and unless someone is suggesting that publishers are secretly in collusion about collecting racial data on every submission just so they can reject people of color outright, then there’s not a lot in the way of evidence of institutionalized racism in SF.

That said, I am not denying that there is a problem. On the contrary, I’m only suggesting that it’s easy to say “SF is racist” from a shortsighted standpoint than it is to actually get the necessary data to make well-educated claims. There are plenty of instances where publishers do things that boggle the mind because they are quite obviously racist (things like Whitewashing—i.e. creating book covers with White characters, when the characters are actually Black or Purple, or whatever), but those are not necessarily connected to a grand publishing conspiracy. Taking a step back and trying to figure out all of the hidden details of the publishing industry will give us the information we need to make an accurate claim of institutionalized racism.

I'm going to end this post here, because the next section is quite large. Any thoughts thus far?

Academic Goodies: The Science Fiction of My New Year

Well, I said I would post the proposal abstracts for the various academic conferences I will be attending. All three of them deal with science fiction on some level, as indicated here. It should be interesting to present all of these papers and field questions from the audience. I don't get many opportunities to talk about science fiction with fellow academics.

So here goes:

"Habitually Us: Battlestar Galactica, the “Android Personality,” and Human Preservation" (to be presented at the SWTXPCA Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico):

Philip K. Dick, in talking about the rise of consumer culture in the 60s and 70s, suggested that society had fallen prey to what he called the “android personality,” a reflexive, repetitive personality incapable of making exceptions or doing anything other than what it had always done. There are obvious connections between this concept and his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and it is a concept that can readily be found within more modern forms of science fiction.

Ron D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica imagines a future/past that mirrors many of the same concerns Dick imagined were present in the proliferation of the “android personality.” Not only does Battlestar Galactica question the very nature of humanity by juxtaposing it against the humanoid Cylon (literally and metaphorically), but it also imagines the interchangeability of the “android personality,” from human to Cylon, and the reflexive nature of both.

In this paper, I will use Philip K. Dick’s non-fiction “philosophies” to analyze the relationship between the humans and Cylons of Battlestar Galactica and the “android personality.” I will argue that the reflexive nature of the “android personality” is both based on a purely selfish motive and is also a necessary, though not necessarily positive, human reaction to preserve human identity in the face of something human and not-human at the same time.

“Otherism: The Dissection of Humanity and the Negation of the Human in Battlestar Galactica” (to be presented at the PCA/ACA Conference in St. Louis, Missouri):

Science fiction film has had a curious history in relation to the human/other dichotomy. In its early days, science fiction imagined the other as the monstrous alien or robot, a vision that has now largely been adopted by supernatural horror and the less frequent science fiction horror. The re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, however, has offered a contrary and more complicated view of the other in science fiction film. With the advent of the Cylons as biological “machines,” the human/other dichotomy becomes not only an allegory for our current and past relations to the “other,” but also a force that essentially dissects humanity piece by piece by exposing the human to an “other” so like itself. Humanity’s understanding of what it means to be “human,” thus, is put in jeopardy.

In this paper I will argue that Battlestar Galactica’s presentation of human-like Cylons effectively negates the existence of the category of the human. I will examine the literal deletion of the human as a distinctive entity, and humanity’s responses to the sudden disruption of its identity, from a past-reflective collection of human exceptionalist reactions to the acknowledgement of the emerging death of the human and the hybridization of the human/other dichotomy.

"Shaping the Shapeless: New Weird, Bizarro, and Bending Genres"(to be presented at the "What Happens Now: 21st Century Writing in English--the first decade" conference in Lincoln, England):

The past ten years have changed many things in science fiction and fantasy. The former has had what some have called a golden age in film, while the latter has seen a remarkable explosion of interest in literature with the power of the urban fantasy and young adult markets essentially turning the entire genre into one of the most lucrative and vibrant writing fields around--more so than it ever was. But what of science fiction literature and literature on the margins of speculative fiction?

The new Millenium has resulted in a curious array of changes within speculative fiction. Two movements have been primarily responsible in what one might call the “weirding” of the genre: New Weird and Bizarro. Each places emphasis on an impossible-to-define exceptional weirdness, and the result has been the development of a cult following and a significant, if not unintentional, influence on the wider range of science fiction and fantasy being written today. The 2000s, as a result, have been noticeably experimental in form, style, and content, with new and old authors approaching speculative fiction from a odd, even surreal perspective.

In this paper I will analyze the emergence of the “weird” through New Weird, Bizarro, and other as yet un-named categories and their widespread influence on speculative fiction, from the unique, spatially disconnected short fiction of Jason Sanford to the characteristically nonsensical atmospheres and concepts of writers like Jeff Vandermeer, Brian Francis Slattery, China Mieville, Steve Aylett, and others.

There you go. Any thoughts?

A New Hope: Final Resolutions to the Power of Science Fiction

(…or why optimism in science fiction is not all that hard to find if you’re really looking)

What is it about so much of science fiction that drives writers and film-makers to grasp the pessimistic (dystopias, end of the world schemes, et. al.)? I think I’ve finally figured it out. Whether or not this is a conscious element is irrelevant, because it is almost always there, and it is perhaps the most optimistic thought, idea, concept, whatever you want to call it that might ever exist in any form of fiction you can find (and I have no illusions that this thing exists in other genres too). It is so powerful that it overwhelms when you discover it, when you see it buried underneath all the flashy images and the downright terrifying futures imagined by writers of all stripes. And if you’re like me, one of those weird folks that actually cries in movies, then it is something that drives you to tears, because it is beautiful and uplifting and tremendous in ways that you might never expect.

It is an amalgam of hope and perseverance, of spirit and resolve, of so many tiny things that exist in all of us, which we take for granted or ignore so often. It doesn’t really have a name, but you can see it come to life at the moment when all hope is lost, when you think that it might just be the end of a character, or our species in general, when humanity itself seems lost to its own devices (psychological that they are, they exhibit a kind of foreboding element that is both "proper to man," as Derrida would say, and also terrifyingly destructive to the prospect of a salvagable humanity). It’s that flash that answers the question William Adama (of Battlestar Galactica) sadly recognizes: the question of whether we deserve to exist.

In an attempt to display this, I have to show by example. Maybe you cried at these moments too, or maybe you think I am being absurd, but they are moments that show us just what it is that makes mankind worth saving. We can see, in these little moment of science fiction wonder, what makes fiction and movies so powerful in our lives, and what makes science fiction so perfect at displaying the human condition at its worst and at its best, and in that moment where we know, deep down, there we really are something more than what we see every day (more than all the othering, hatred, death, destruction, mutilation, mutation, and terror that is the human).

Example One (from the end of Sunshine) – the Sacrifice
Everything has fallen apart. The attempt to resurrect the Icarus One so the mission to restart the Sun will have two shots has failed and a psychotic Icarus One captain has stolen aboard the Icarus Two after sabotaging the airlock. One by one everyone is dying and it seems like all hope is lost. Then Kappa vents the ship, stumbles to the payload for the Icarus Two after disconnecting it to start the launch sequence, and takes a crazy space walk (or jump, rather) to manually set off the fireworks, sacrificing himself and anyone else alive to make sure it gets done, while fighting off the crazed captain.

That’s it. That whole moment, with the music accompanying it. Maybe it seems trite, or silly, but in that moment I get that feeling that so much of science fiction is trying to give me: that even in the worst of times there is something redeeming about us, that our sad, pathetic little species can accomplish something so beautiful in the face of destruction and despair that everything pales before it. All that our minds can create (all that art, philosophy, intelligence, and technology) can finally come together in the face of humanity's absolute negation (a human self that is at once all that is humanity and all that is destructive of humanity) to spark the beautiful moment of birth (a rebirth, literally, of our greatest god--the sun).

Example Two (from the end of Battlestar Galactica) – the Desperate Leap (or the Other Sacrifice)
Cut out the last half hour of the final episodes and imagine only the lead-up to the final battle and the battle itself, right up until the random jump to Earth (New Earth, Other Earth, whatever you want to call it). That’s where I’m looking to.

The Galactica is falling apart, literally, and yet there is something in the idea of Hera, of that little half-human/half-Cylon girl that Adama can’t let go. Whether she’s the future of humanity or Cylon isn’t relevant to Adama (not really), but it is what she stands for: she’s part of the crew, part of the ragtag gang of humans, and a piece of the very soul both human and Cylon, and a man like Adama cannot let a child, an innocent, be destroyed by the terror of the second-Cylon half (the Cavals, Simons, and Dorals).

So, he sacrifices half of his own heart, the Galactica, and the other half, Roslin, and anyone else willing to take the risk, to get Hera back. The whole idea is suicide, but that doesn’t matter. It’s about the greater idea: what they are sacrificing themselves for. The whole scene is astonishingly littered with what I’m trying to talk about here, this intangible thing that is optimistic even in the face of impending doom (and the Galactica is, or should be, doomed). The end is the moment when the line doesn’t dissolve, but begins to break; humans and Cylons are still separate, but it is here that we see both groups (the “good” Cylons, anyway) beginning to eat away at the line. United not just in a common goal, but in a goal to revitalize one’s soul, the merger in the fight for Hera signals an answer: humanity is worth saving. And the final second when everything is falling apart again, just when it seems that Caval can no longer be reasoned with? Well, how optimistic can you get when what seems like the crazed dreams of an unknown (Starbuck, that is, because nobody actually knows what she is anymore) can represent the last ditch hope for a failing humankind?

No, the end of Battlestar Galactica doesn’t resolve all of those tensions. It never could. We’re talking about the dissolution of a tension created by genocide. Scars like that don’t heal well, and in some cases don’t heal at all (particularly if we look at ourselves and all we've done with Apartheid and the Holocaust), but there is at least the promise, in the true merger of human and Cylon, that we are better for making the suicidal leap for something greater, something that makes us more than just human by birth. It’s a hope of a greater humanity (a non-humanity, since Battlestar Galactica imagines us, the present humans, to be part Cylon).

Example Three (from the end of The Return of the Jedi) – the Return From Darkness
Luke Skywalker is defeated by the Emperor. He lies on the ground and the Emperor strikes him with Force lightning over and over, electrocuting poor Skywalker to death. He calls out, begging his father (Darth Vader) to help him, even though everything up to this point indicates that Vader is lost to the Dark Side. There cannot possibly be hope, right?

But no, Darth Vader sees his son dying before him, and all that darkness inside his soul lifts, just for that moment, and he launches the Emperor over the balcony into the abyss of the second Death Star. He doesn’t do so unscathed, however: the Emperor’s lightning and the previous battle with his son, and all the emotional turmoil that has plagued the prodigal son of the Dark Side weigh in on Vader, consuming him. He cannot be saved, but it doesn’t matter, because he has already been saved, just by acting.

That’s the moment. You can call it the power of unconditional love, or maybe something deeper that resides in most of us (something that can break most of us even after being driven down by darkness for so long). It’s something that tells us that even if we are broken and weak, we are still capable of greatness, however small. Darth Vader’s rise from the depths is a testament to the power of whatever lies inside the human body. You can call it the soul or our hearts, or whatever; it doesn’t matter what it’s called, because whatever it is, it is powerful, and captures us on the screen and on the page in a way that it can wash away all the despair and sadness that we have endured before.

Darth Vader, in sacrificing himself, his place in the world, his hatred and anger for the loss of his love, and his twisted relationship with the Emperor, dissolves the line much like the end of Battlestar Galactica tries to display. He sends up a little glimmer of the kind of hope that keeps even the most desperate (and disparate) clinging to an idea. Vader regains that idea, and in doing so makes real Luke Skywalker's idea of the father-that-would-be. There is no illusion that Vader can ever be returned, though, even if Skywalker assumes it to be true; instead, there is just the hope of redemption. Vader has that in the end, sacrificing himself for his son and the ideal of the Light Side of the Force.

I don’t know if I’ve made my point after all of the above. I wanted to get at something that is engrained in almost every science fiction story, no matter how dark, and something that you might see elsewhere in different forms; in science fiction this thing is almost always something so human and powerful that it casts an optimistic light on everything when it is seen. There are so many examples of this throughout science fiction and fantasy that it would be absurd not to have experienced it at least once.

That is what makes science fiction great, and that is part of why I love this genre so much that I am dedicating my life to it. Because it is a wondrous window into the best and worst of all of us, a gateway into the motivations, weaknesses, strengths, and capabilities of humanity.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, (WISB Science Fiction and Fantasy 2009 Remix)

We science fiction and fantasy fans don't have enough Christmas songs to keep us happy. So, I submit to you my 2009 SF/F version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Enjoy:
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
An accidental time traveler.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Two different Spocks,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spocks,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spocks,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spocks,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Eight transforming robots,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Nine voodoo dolls,
Eight transforming robots,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Ten insect-like aliens,
Nine voodoo dolls,
Eight transforming robots,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Eleven blue giants
Ten insect-like aliens,
Nine voodoo dolls,
Eight transforming robots,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Twelve humanoid Cylons,
Eleven blue giants
Ten insect-like aliens,
Nine voodoo dolls,
Eight transforming robots,
Seven braindead vampires,
Six fledgling wizards,
Five Terminators,
Four furry monsters,
Three neutron bombs,
Two different Spock’s,
And an accidental time traveler.

There you have it. Have fun singing it around your family!

Seven Science Fiction Movies That Should Be TV Shows

There are a lot of fantastic movies out there that have the potential to be more. Terminator, for example, certainly had the possibility of a TV show built into it, and with the moderate success of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, everyone can see why (even if you didn’t like the show to begin with). But what other movies would make great TV shows?

The following are my top seven movies that should be turned into TV shows:

Galaxy Quest
Tim Allen is probably an easy pick for the small screen. For one, he’s already been there with Home Improvement, demonstrating that he knows the trade; and two, Galaxy Quest is a perfect fit for his comedic style both on the big screen and on our television sets. Add in the rest of the cast, some of them TV experts and some of them just damn good actors, and you have the potential for a great show. The only thing that has to be decided is this: do you tell a story about the actors going on space adventures, or the story of the fictional characters in the TV show?
Problem: Daryl Mitchell is paralyzed due to a car accident; the way around that is to rewrite his character with the same disability.
Pitch: America’s answer to Doctor Who.

Equilibrium
While the movie is fairly self-contained, it alludes to a lot of back matter that would make for an interesting television series (preferably on HBO or Showtime, rather than the networks). You could tell one of two stories: the prequel story of how the world turned into this emotion-rejecting, drugged up ninja clan, or the sequel of what happens after Bale’s character gets revenge. Both could work, but I suspect that a prequel would be somewhat pointless, since we know where things end up.
Problem: There would have to be some damned fine writers to pull this off. You could say that of most of these, but I think Equilibrium requires the kind of writer who can manage the depth of character needed to make it interesting and powerful. Someone like Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica, perhaps.
Pitch: 1984 meets Brave New World and Philip K. Dick.

The One
As one of my favorite movies of all time, this Jet Li action flick has a built in concept for a television series. All you have to do is cut out all the bits about “the one” and tell a show about the police officers who patrol the multiverse (multiple dimensions). Make it part police procedural, part action and you’ve got the makings of an awesome show.
Problem: A TV version of The One can’t be anthology style like The Outer Limits or other shows (i.e. the terrible Dollhouse). It has to really get into the characters and provide more than a repetition of the same basic plot over and over.
Pitch: Science Fiction has a love affair with Law & Order.

Alien/Aliens
Two classics of science fiction, the series has recently been bastardized in the Alien vs. Predator movies and is desperately in need of a proper revival. A TV show produced by one of the cable networks with quality writing, plenty of the dark, scary horror, and the military-style science fiction elements could remind us what was so awesome about the originals. There’s potential for an expansive look into the universe that gave us Ripley and the alien queen, with all kinds of social and political dynamics coming into play.
Problem: Whoever tries to pull this off would has to realize that the only way Alien/s can work is with decent writing, good special effects, and realistic portrayals of the aliens. This means no TV-quality CG and a lot of attention paid to detail. While the original Alien was sparse, a TV show has to do more.
Pitch: Aliens. That is all.

The Fifth Element
Cut out all of the heavy religious stuff (which worked well for the movie) and you could have a really interesting world to work with for a TV show. The Fifth Element is one of those weird, strangely lovable films that gives you so much, but can only develop a few of the important points before ending. A TV show, however, could take all of those bits that we only got a glimpse of and make a pretty weird, pretty fun story.
Problem: Deciding what kind of story to tell in this particular universe would be a tough choice. Do you ignore the original characters in exchange for a broader, adventurous, slightly odd show, or do you stick with the God person and the cab driver? That’s a tough choice.
Pitch: It’s Star Wars meets Red Dwarf and Total Recall.

Serenity/Firefly
Yes, it’s already been a TV show. Yes, it was canceled. But the fact that Whedon’s fans helped spawn the movie Serenity should be reason enough to consider the possibility of a revival of a Firefly series. Just imagine what it would be like to see Reynolds and his crew firing up the sky with Serenity, causing mayhem and havoc wherever they go. There’s still life in the series, and fans would fall head over heels for the opportunity to see it back on their television screens.
Problem: It's already been canceled once. The solution is to host the show on another network, preferably one that has a healthy respect for science fiction. Besides, some of the original characters were killed off in Serenity, and Whedon would have to come up with some damned good reasons to replace them.
Pitch: A western in space with your lovable ragtag group of smugglers, gunhands, and government experiments.

Starship Troopers
Yes, I am well aware of the horrible animated show and the various craptastic sequels to the original movie, but if any concept deserves a shot at being blown up Band of Brothers style by HBO or Showtime, it is Starship Troopers. With a decent budget and some good writing, this classic science fiction satire could really take Heinlein’s original novel to new heights. All it needs is a little facelift and some good, honest writing.
Problems: You’d need a fairly big budget and the writing would have to be exceptional to pull this off. While the movie works, the franchise has largely been bastardized by crappy writing and poor effects. Someone has to be brave enough to invest in a true Starship Troopers TV show for this to work.
Pitch: Band of Brothers in space with giant insect-like aliens.

And there you have it. What movies would you like to see turned into TV shows? Let me know in the comments!