Science Fiction - The Theater of Ideas

Science Fiction has always been the theater of the imagination. More any other genre in film or literature, Sci-Fi allows the creator and the audience to go anywhere and do anything, unfettered by any limitation save that of imagination. If I am creating or watching a crime story or a western the creator is limited to the rules of that “universe”. In other words the creator has to know just how a colt 45 operates and how a crime scene looks and cannot deviate from those rules without compromising the story. In the realm of Science Fiction the creator can make his or her own rules. In the classic Sci-fi film Forbidden Planet, Dr. Morbius describes the remarkable Robby the Robot as something he happened to “tinker” together. We do not need to know how he built Robby, only that he DID and that Robby reacts consistently within the rules that the creator established for the story.

Science Fiction provides a huge canvas to examine ideas and to hold a mirror up to the current state of the human condition. The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Thing hold a mirror up to the Post World War II Cold War paranoia. 1960’s  films like Soylent Green, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes examine our growing fear of technology and the possibility of a dystopian post apocalyptic future in which we are robbed of our essential humanity. However, not all Science Fiction paints a bleak future. 2001 examines our nature as explorers while Star Trek paints a picture of the future in which humans will rise above petty desires to work together for a greater good. In the great George Pal film When Worlds Collide technology saves humanity when the earth is destroyed by an errant star.

Sci-fi films allow us to “remake” great films and plays in a new setting. Alien is simply any number of haunted house horror films. Forbidden Planet is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest. The Star Trek episode Balance Of Terror is Run Silent Run Deep, retold.  

AND Sci-fi is growing by leaps and bounds both on the book shelf and on the screen. Science Fiction films typically dominate summer blockbusters and more and more shelf space is dedicated to the genre in book stores. For fans like me who grew up with Science Fiction being a “niche” genre, this is truly a golden age.

Next...my "ode" to Buffy The Vampire Slayer :)

That’s 30!