Lets say Lost in Space-level bad, although many other shows and movies, even the original Star Trek, occasionally are guilty of this. What they have in common is the depiction of outer space as a fantasy realm- a realm where literally anything can happen. Never mind what is known about the actual galaxy or universe, never mind the laws of physics. It’s Outer Space; therefore, you can find anything out there somewhere. A Nazi planet. A Mobs of Chicago planet. Space Hippies. Space Pirates. Space Hillbillies. Now this is usally attributed to hack writing or a total discomprehension of what science fiction is all about. But I recently had an insight that there might actually be a theory behind this. One that explains (though hardly excuses) why writers not only produce this drek but stare at you in genuine bewilderment when you tell them it’s drek.
It’s this: that whether they realize it or not, they’re presuming that Earth is “the world” in the original sense of world as in “reality”, “universe”. And that other planets are other “worlds” in the same sense. In other words, if you think of space as an interdimensional void, and journeying to other planets as interdimensional or parallel universe travel, you get the effect shown by bad science fiction. Possibly this began as a misconception of the idea that if space is infinite, then anything possible happens in it somewhere (which even if true doesn’t mean that anything whatsoever happens in our galaxy or our observable universe). Look at how the word “space” is used in popular parlance: “spaced out” “space cadet” “spacey” “out in space” = not in touch with reality. Ditto “a world of his own” “off on another planet” “Planet of the <whaever>”. = different realities from our own.
So think of bad science fiction as not very well written parallel-universe stories, or “Sliders” done by starship instead of portable wormhole generator, and you pretty much explain it.
A lot of it is just poorly veiled preaching - giving something you want to attack an alien mask.
Like the TOS episode about an alien race where half of them were black on the left side of their face and white on the right side, and the other half was the opposite and they hated each other.
And if that weren’t heavy handed enough, Kirk at one point asks Spock “isn’t their planet from the southern side of the galaxy?” :smack: :smack:
To be fair to TOS, this was actually a case of cultural contamination. A Federation explorer left behind a book about 1920s Chicago on the planet, and the natives apparently modeled their entire society on it. How the natives learned to read English, I have no idea, but the Space Mafia didn’t come into existence ex nihilo.
Sort of like the alleged Roddenberry first pitch for Star Trek was “It’s ‘Wagon Train’, in space”. As David Gerrold later on put it (paraphrasing here), Trek TOS’s genre is not “Science Fiction Drama”, it’s Action-Adventure using SciFi idioms/settings. Same deal with SW and a whole bunch of other works.
In any case, SciFi in the end inevitably IS about us and our world. All good SciFi, like all good literature, is about human issues we can relate to. As Rod Serling is alleged to have said, that for which people, if they see a Negro or a Russian doing or saying it, would turn off the TV, they’ll stay tuned and pay attention if it’s a Martian doing or saying it.
As RealityChuck succintly states it, the problems/dissonances with cheap genre fiction happen when you write it down to lowest common denominator or make it formulaic, and go for the easy thrill/laugh; or when you worry that the audience won’t get it so you paste a huge unnecessary HEY LOOK THIS IS ALIEN billboard on it. Or resort to handwave, deus-ex-machina, blackbox or technobabble to clear away plot problems real or imagined. With TV shows this is a bigger risk because you have to crank out 20+ screenplays a year so you eventually run out of time and ideas.
(OTOH, yes, “Let This Be Your Final Battlefield” was a sterling example of Trek taking a message and delivering it wrapped around a wrecking ball…)
I completely disagree. How much science was there in “The Left Hand of Darkness”?
I think that bad science fiction occurs when writers think that by throwing in wild concepts and far out devices, they can cover bad plotting, indifferent prose and poor character exposition. It’s like throwing a lot of spices in the soup in hopes that no one will notice that the ingredients are no good.
So Heinlein wrote bad science fiction (how much science was in Double Star? The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Stranger in a Strange Land? – Heinlein knew that a person couldn’t survive on Mars and that there were no Martians). And Bester. And Ursula LeGuin. And Samuel R. Delaney (who pointed out the idiocy of assuming that science fiction had anything to do with science back in the 80s with his “red screamer”* analogy).
Science fiction is not about science. It never was; the science was just an excuse to tell a story. In fact, one of the reasons why science fiction is stagnant these days is that too many people insist on the science and will nitpick the smallest scientific error, no matter how irrelevant it is to the story.
Science fiction is first and foremost fiction. It can be based on scientific fact, or just on speculation about the future (with commentary on the present). If the science is wrong, that’s only a minor issue unless you’re using that science as a major plot point.
There’s nothing wrong with hard SF, and it can be an interesting genre. But to say that only hard SF is science fiction is like saying only slapstick is comedy – it’s only one particular subgenre of the entire field.
*Delaney’s argument (in Triton) went something like this. Suppose you have a bunch of kids who have never seen a firetruck. One day a firetruck goes by. Not knowing what it is, they give it a name. Seeing the color, and hearing the sound, they call it a “red screamer.” And over time, new kids come along and, when the firetruck goes by, the older kids tell them it’s a red screamer. “What does it do?” asks the new kid. “It’s red and it screams. It’s red so you can see it and screams so you can get out of the way.” Defining science fiction by defining “science” and “fiction” is like defining a firetruck as a red screamer – the words do not define what the genre is or what it does.
Bad TV and movie science fiction frequently does behave as you observe, and it has always troubled me mightily that “science fiction” means to the makers and viewers of these things “a place where anything can happen, and is exempt from not only the normal laws of physics, but also of dramatic reality, And frequently of common sense.” So you can end the series ** Quantum Leap** by having the main character (and his wife) acquiesce to his perpetual jumping through time and space, when your ordinary averahe person would be seriously pissed at being used as a ping pong ball by whatever Powers That Be. (And forget about the physics of the situation. Or the logic).
I can forgive TV science fiction its many sins – they have to do the impossible job of turning in something that’s entertaining, won’t alienate the large body of viewers (that cover a spectrum of knowledge and interest from hard-core science to light fantasy to muggles), won’t offend networks or advertisers, fit into the highly artificial time and tempo constraints of a one hour TV show, and still come in under budget. And be original and entertaining. So I cut them some slack when they visit Old Chicago and everyone speaks English. That they manage to produce shows that I am actually willing to watch is no small achievement.
Such “domestic” SF is blinkered – it assumes that the common experience is the norm, and, like that New Yorker picture of the US as seen by a New Yorker, quickly telescopes everything else into a narrow space – except that “everything” here means the universe. It’s always refreshing when they break out of that shell, getting outside the comfort zone of their viewers. As Isaac Asimov remarked about one such series (Land of the Giants), in a TV Guide piece, the humans have the advantage of encountering aliens who live in the same society as they do, dress the same way, have the same customs, and speak the same language. They would have had a harder time of it if, instead of crashing on an alien world, they’d accidentally landed in Paris.
I think the term science fiction poses a problem, it’s a shoe that has to fit a multitude of feet so to speak. There’s everything from Victorian steampunk to hard SF to transcendental gender-bending trippy stuff. The term itself isn’t going to go away, but it’s important to be mindful of what it really means (as beautifully illustrated by RealityChuck above). I prefer to avoid the SF term altogether and talk about fantastic fiction. It’s a vague term which poses other problems (since it includes fantasy and horror too), but at least you can get to the important bits without having to do the “science/fiction” discussion first.
I thing it’s interesting that the two best science fiction TV series of recent years - **Battlestar Galactica ** and *Firefly * - are also some of the “softest” ever. No aliens, no strange planets, little technobabble, little interest in science and technology at all, just people interacting with people… in spaceships.
There are two types who write (or produce) sf - those who consider it a greater challenge than normal fiction, since you must invent a consistent and logical world in addition to all the other stuff, and those who consider it easier, since you can throw logic out the window, because it’s just scifi. When people in the latter camp write it, you get drek - and Lost in Space is a splendid example.
Star Trek in the beginning worked hard at logic, but once Roddenberry stopped day to day supervision, it lost it. The Writers Guide made the point that if the action would make no sense on a Navy ship in the present, it makes no sense on the Enterprise.
Lots of people don’t get that sf must be consistent. When I was in a writing critique group, one person said that I should have aliens in more environments. (I already had oxygen and ammonia breathers.) When I said that there weren’t a lot of other possibilities, she said I should just make up an element. :eek: Another person was writing something about a relationship between two aliens, from totally different evolutionary backgrounds. When I mentioned that they weren’t going to be able to have progeny, it turns out that this was supposed to be the big surprise at the end of the book.
Humorous sf has different standards. Even I don’t critique the science in Hitchhikers Guide. The problem I had with “A Piece of the Action” wasn’t the gangster setting, it was how the two major competing gangs on the whole planet were in the same city, a badly driven car ride away from each other.
I think this is really well put (and it echoes what CalMeacham said).
While I suppose it’s too much to expect of all SF, I really admire those who can write entertaining science fiction that is completely immune to nitpicking.