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Guest Writer: Groshan Fabiola

In 1977, Star Wars reintroduced the world to the serialized space opera with groundbreaking results both creatively and financially. In the wake of this paradigm shift came a gaggle of embarrassing me-too projects both for film and television. Then there was Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica was the brain-child of producer/writer/director Glen Larson. It was both a pastiche of the Star Wars formula, and a bizarre melding of wagon train and Egyptian mythology. The series chronicled the adventures of a “Rag Tag Fleet” running from the Cylons, a mechanized horde of robots lead by a human traitor; their destination is a mythical world called “Earth”. Battlestar Galactica was a success both theatrically and on the television. Despite it’s campy acting and plot lines there was an endearing element in the quest of these characters. Battlestar Galactica never made any apologies for borrowing the character archetypes made so popular in Star Wars. Apollo is a dark haired Luke Skywalker, Sheba the strong female cut from the Princess Leia strand, and Starbuck as the charismatic scoundrel that Han Solo would surely approve of. Despite these obvious pastiches, Battlestar Galactica got away with it. Read more »

“Because, to most people, it seemed lurid, fantastic and nonsensical trash, science fiction’s fans have tended to be a bit defensive in their attitude.”
– John W. Campbell, Jr., “Concerning Science Fiction”

I know that within my lifetime, the popular view of science fiction has changed for a lot of people. These days, TV Guide dedicates an entire issue to the new and returning genre shows — there are that many.

So, do science fiction fans still need to be defensive? Is SF still seen as “lurid, fantastic and nonsensical trash”? My answer would be, it depends on who you talk to.

I think overall, more people are open to science fiction, in part because so much of what used to be science fiction is science fact. Also, I think it some cases the quality of science fiction has improved a great deal from the early years, in part to Campbell’s work as editor of Astounding Science Fiction.

But to this day, I still meet people who are turned off by the term science fiction and use it to mean “junk.” I still meet people who won’t watch a TV show like Stargate SG-1 or Lost or Heros because it smacks too much of science fiction.

However, it seems clear that TV and movie executives are totally OK with SF if it has a strong plot.

But what of literature? I don’t see a lot of SF novels on the best seller list these days. Fantasy and horror sometimes make it, but rarely SF. Then again, I could be wrong. It’s not like I have my finger on the pulse of publishing or anything.

No matter how you look at it, I don’t feel the need to be defensive about my passion for science fiction. I wear it proudly.

What about you?

Back in 1941, Robert A. Heinlein proposed the initials “SF,” which at the time was a common abbreviation for “science fiction.” But he had another idea. He felt it should stand for the broader term “speculative fiction.” To this day, there are passionate debates about which term to use.

Is is all semantics? Here’s what I think.

Science fiction is a subset of speculative fiction, which also includes fantasy, magic realism and sometimes even horror. Speculative fiction encompasses all fiction that speculates on something that isn’t accepted as fact today (an outpost on Mars, sorcery, magical coincidence, ghosts, etc.) and treats it as a fact within the story.

Science fiction is more specific. It is a fiction that speculates on scientific concepts and theories, or at least pretends to. There is a fuzzy line there. The Barsoom novels are kind of science fiction, but are also purely fantasy (I mean really, a placental human successfully mates with a monotreme Martian?).

Now, just to let you know where I’m coming from, I tend to be a very tolerant, easy going person. I don’t like fighting and tend to find common ground when I can. Maybe that’s why I just don’t see what all the fuss over “science fiction” vs. “speculative fiction” is all about. I think they can coexist peacefully. What do you think?

“The alien is the creation of a need — man’s need to designate something that is genuinely outside himself, something that is truly non man, that has no initial relation to man except for the fact that it has no relation …. it is through learning to relate to the alien that man has learned to study himself.”

From the prefact to Aliens: The Anthropology of Science Fiction,
edited by George Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin

This morning a bird flew into the patio window and knocked itself out. I found it lying on its back breathing rapidly. I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. It just looked at me.

This got me to thinking about aliens in science fiction. Just like that little bird, the likelihood that an alien would have any true understanding of my intentions are pretty low. Or are they?

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