My angst is with some Sci-Fi fans

Well, there’s another way to look at it.

Sci-fi, in general is a marginalized genre. Books, movies, and TV shows in particular, are always kind of considered fringe, and weird by the majority of westerners. Now, why is that? Partly, I think, because sci-fi is a challenging medium. It challenges the audience to suspend disbelief, embrace weirdness like aliens and spaceships, and to be intelligent enough to digest the complex concepts. And, as we all know, the majority of westerners (and us americans in particular) like to have our entertainment fed to us in bite sized portions, with catsup, and not too many spices. Hence Friends, Titanic, and Danielle Steel novels. So, because of this, there isn’t as large a market for sci-fi as there is for romance, light comedy, and action/adventure, and so, therefore, not as much money available to the creators of sci-fi. Little money means frequent mediocrity. This is why sci-fi movies generally do poorly at the box office, sci-fi TV shows get cancelled after one or two seasons, and sci-fi books never make the Oprah Book Club (like that’s a bad thing… heh).

Sci-Fi, as a genre, will always be the underdog because the masses fear it, scoff at it, don’t understand it, and don’t care about it. The masses are stupid. Heh.

i agree charmlessman… i want *more* scifi and fantasy shows/ movies… but unfortunately, it looks like they are going to keep giving us more shows like *survivor* and sitcoms until the masses brains are just puddles of goo.

my fave scifi is in books or video games these days usually, i don’t appreciate cookie cutter shows that take old stories and try to make them *hip* for the day… [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] i won’t mention any names… *cough* the chronicle *cough* *cough* (Censored) *cough*

why gloss over scifi and try to make it “friends” in a weird setting so teeny boppers will like it. [img]images/smiles/icon_mad.gif[/img] those shows are so brainless and unclever that it’s really sad… they aren’t even *SCI* fi… why are they showing these programs? INVEST in *Science Fiction* dangit we don’t watch the channel to see poorly written wannabe horror shows. [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] i personally blame the “scream/ i know what you last summer on a tuesedy afternoon while eating a danish” crowd for the types of things they show on the scifi ch now. (cherry falls??? WHAT???)

X factor has grown on my a tiny bit, but, i can only watch it while i do other things, LoL i’m just glad i still have farscape, DS9 reruns & enterprise. ::sighs in relief::

the whole problem is — we just need four more seasons of Lexx, LoL [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] (at LEAST, hehe)

quote:

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Originally posted by Slopmaster:
…. Not every new Sci-Fi series is going to impress everyone but at least not whine and complain about it to me because well thats just sad.

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Bollocks! [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

I’m [b][i]Glad to be Sad![/i][/b] [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

I know what you mean about peeps who generally moan about all modern sci fi being bad, but the fact is that there is a lot of [i]formula[/i] stuff out there.

In the ol’ days (eee when I were a lad), Sci Fi seemed to be for a certain audience, a group of people who were a little more free-thinking (or geeky) than yer average Joe/Jenny and it wasn’t (to me at least) patronising.

In most new sci fi shows (and films) that appear nowadays, the writers have a scathing disregard for people with brains (yes, people like wot I is!) and write to what seems like a formula. Someone once told me that advertisements on TV are written so that people who are at least 10 years old can see the message/get the meaning, and I feel that modern sci fi shows are produced to that same level.

The first series of Dark Angel was very popular in Britain but I found that I couldn’t watch it very much (dispite the gorgeous leading lady) because it was patronising drivel!

8 out of 10 Sci Fi shows (and films) seem to be the same – total crap! I know that most of the media released today is geared to the teenage market, but why can’t the idiots with media money give teenagers a break!? Treat them as though they are people with more than two brain cells that don’t all think with the stuff between their legs!

(erm.. and I don’t mean their bums!… although strictly erm… a bum isn’t between your legs… if you see what I mean….. and NO! I’m not a teenager!)

Yeah.it like, CONSUMED my paper…….

And i was like…..wow.

Thats cool.

[quote=”kokopelli”]SciFi used to be a box in the back room of the used book store.

Then along came Star Trek…[/quote]

A well resurrected old thread. Hadn’t read this before. I like your analogy, Kokopelli. I’d add, along came Doctor Who (from 1963) too, because like with Star Trek (1966), it helped popularise the genre.

Pulp fiction sci-fi stories were actually very popular following the 1st World War, And Jules Verne, for instance, was a well-received writer back in the late 1800s. I’m inclined to compare the sci-fi film practice of taking not critically well-received pulpy literature with the film noir movement (old pulp detective stories). It is great to find those back-room books on the screen. I still find myself picking up sci-fi books at the back of the bookstore for a quarter.

In literature there are sci-fi, or speculative fiction, classics that have been praised outside sci-fi circles. For instance, Brave New World and 1984, Lem, Vonnegut, Heinlein have all been well-received as serious writers. Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury had big success.

I think that there has been something of a return to pulp sci-fi. Comic book adaptations have become so popular (incidentally, I still love the monster B-movies from the 50s).

Sorry to digress from your points, but this is related to comments made earlier in the thread…

Many sci-fi, or sci-fi[i]ish[/i] flicks, have had major mainstream success, just as many have had critical success (Solaris, 2001 etc.)

Think of blockbusters such as Star Wars, ET, or the Matrix. Big budget flicks that pulled in big money. Star Wars and ET I tend to think of as fantasy (very soft sci-fi), and The Matrix one [i]might[/i] consider to be more of action flick — though it’s very cyberpunk . Soft sci-fi has done pretty well with the masses, but hard sci-fi is a harder sell. Not surprising that has found less acceptance amongst the masses since such “speculative fiction” is empirically grounded, and it definitely helps to have a fair understanding of science (gotta be interested in it).

[quote=”Charmlessman”] It’s the very reasons the masses hate sci-fi that I (and I suspect many others) love it. It’s challenging and exciting.
But, more so than ANY other genre of entertainment, sci-fi is unlimited.
…

Even sci-fi’s kissing cousin, fantasy, has more limitations than sci-fi. Fantasy means swords, and horses, and mythic beasts, and magic

…. [nice points]

So what makes Sci-Fi? It’s a story that deals with concepts beyond reality. And what is the limit to that? NOTHING!![/quote]

I tend to see it another way. While both Fantasy and science fiction involve the fantastic, I tend to see fantasy as more fantastic and therefore less limited. The Fantasy genre is less reality-based and has fewer limitations than a genre which is grounded in empiricism. “There is a real and knowable universe.” Fantasy is not limited to that thinking — science fiction deals with the possible – speculative — whereas fantasy tend to deal in the impossible, or highly improbable.

True science fiction, as I see it, should be based on science or draw on scientific principles. It should be informed by scientific thought. It’s a rational universe, whereas in fantasy anything can happen for any reason since it often, like horror, involves the supernatural. The only limit is the imagination.

Really, the fantasy and sci-fi genres often overlap – there’s not a clear distinction much of the time. Both can involve themselves with imaginary worlds and people. There’s little difference between a raygun of power and a ring of power. Our science would seem like magic to a less-developed people. A lot of what passes for science fiction involves a lot of cod science anyway (just made up stuff). Since it’s fiction, that’s not surprising. But as science fiction, I like it when, within the fictional narrative structure, the future developments/technology seem to have been extrapolated from current scientific knowledge.

Nothing deals with concepts [b]beyond[/i] reality more than fantasy, or horror (which is another one of the fantastic genres).

I see all speculative fiction as the descendant of mythic storytelling…shamans huddled around a fire weaving tales to excite the imagination and inspire souls. Storytelling.

I believe that true mythic tales are teaching tales…how are we human? what makes us react to new things in different ways? where do we go from here?

Those are the landscapes that speculative fiction travels across.

Oh yeah..the human animal thing… the shamanistic notion of shapeshifting is a remarkably resiliant concept/activity …. Wolverine, Toad, Sabretooth from the X-Men for starters, then there’s The Crow. Well this threads gone off a long way from Sci-fi angst.. perhaps we need a new topic?

We need more Manimal! All Manimal; all the time. 😆 Too bad due to budget restraints there was such a limited animal repertoire. A remake with more and better shapeshifting wouldn’t be a bad idea if the show wasn’t so despised.

As for whining about the state of sci-fi. Some of us enjoy being critical. Generally-speaking, I enjoy reading bad reviews more than good ones. There’s just more chance at humour, I find, when moaning/pointing out flaws.

While I still think there’s quite a bit of good sci-fi coming out, I do think to large extent, that it has become derivative, and panders to the lowest common denominator. There isn’t a heck of a lot of intelligent/sophisticated sci-fi out there. A lot of it is aimed at kids (always was that), and they’re, largely, aiming at such a wide audience that they want everybody to “get” it. So they have to dumb-it-down, or explain more than a thinking person would require (I’m not a fan of exposition — I’d rather work things out for myself/ come to my own conclusions).

I do think that there were more talented/creative sci-fi writers working for TV before. Still, speaking of being derivative, as time goes on, it gets harder to bring in fairly original or groundbreaking ideas — effects, sure, but it’s the ideas/concept that I’m biggest on.

Great examples, Corvina! 🙂

I’m sure the Prisoner wouldn’t have happened if McGoohan hadn’t been such a bankable star. Danger Man was very successful and they’d wanted him to continue with it, but he wanted to get The Prisoner project going — formed a production company, got ITV to run the show etc., and the rest is television history. That’s not to say that there weren’t huge challenges along the way. Did you know McGoogan was asked to play James Bond but turned it down?

And Brit spy thrillers were very popular at the time (The Avengers, The Saint, Danger Man), but certainly the Prisoner moved well beyond spy thriller into more surreal, allegorical, mysterious, imaginative, intelligent, and interesting territory like Lynch’s wonderful Twin Peaks — thoughtful and groundbreaking, memorable shows. Both shows really got the audience thinking and questioning. They got baffled, angry reactions at times from many viewers. The Fall Out over the final episode of The Prisoner was quite extreme.

Those shows were great for water-cooler discussion. It’s, amongst other things, the sense of mystery, the ambiguity, or the interpretive qualities, that makes them great and lasting [url=http://www.sadgeezer.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=29327&highlight=cult&sid=2ea1ed47b222bb026d75c7d7b09356a2&POSTNUKESID=b86a7a5817ca85258637244f3eaaced9#29327]cult shows.[/url]

Be thankful that there are any sci-fi television shows at all.