Aint-It-Cool-News.com is a great website for fans of science fiction and other geeky movies. These days it's one of the most quoted websites for movie quotes. Recently one their writers, Andy Howell, did an interesting rant of the science in the 2009 Star Trek movie. He points out what's nonsense, what makes sense as a plot device, and what actually works. Give it a gander. There's also a good followup on the article too.
I like a good analysis like this. It goes beyond the whole, “That sucked,” or, “That was stupid because…” reactions and gets into the nitty-gritty of the movie.
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Violence and the Media As Commented on by Suzanne Collins
During my Easter visit to my in-laws I just finished the two sequels to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. These are very well-written books with gripping plots. While I was left a bit disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay, both books certainly construct a frighteningly intelligent dystopia. The reader can't help but cheer the main characters to fight against it.
The two main ideas that gripped me with these three novels, and this becomes increasingly clear in Catching Fire and Mockingjay, is the relationship between the media, spectacle and violence. There is almost no violence un these books that does not take place in front of the camera, at least until the third book, and even in Mockingjay, our Heroine Katniss is part of a military squad whose main purpose is to engage in light combat and be filmed.
Now I'm the first person to admit that I enjoy some violent fare every now and then (especially first-person shooters), but I think it's also true that violent media can get a bit overwhelming. The Hunger Games novels makes it clear how violent entertainment can also be a way to control a population. This isn't just with the annual choosing of young people to fight in the Hunger Games, a process designed to demoralize the subjugated districts in the novel. The fact of the game itself becomes an all-consuming phenomenon; even if a resident doesn't want to watch the games, he/she can't help but because it's televised so widely. It becomes the overriding culture of the moment.
I'm reminded a little of the Superbowl. This annual game is always one of the biggest media events of the year, and, let's face it, it's kind of violent. The Super Bowl certainly isn't Roman Colosseum-level violence — we thankfully haven't gone to that level of depravity — but the game isn't gentle. Now I'm not trying to condemn the Superbowl here; all I'm saying is that there does seem to be something in the human psyche that desires this kind of experience, a mass-level hyper-competitive spectacle. Thank God we have something like the Superbowl, actually. While players do get hurt, at least their well-paid participation is by choice. The losers do walk off the field sadly, but at least, unlike in ancient Rome, they get to walk off the field. I'm reminded also about stories I heard about the early years of the Civil War, where families would picnic and watch the battles unfold. Whatever the cause of this, we do seem to be a society that enjoys watching violence. Where does it come from? Frustration with modern life? The necessary suppression of the id by the superego? Whatever the cause, it's a part of human civilization. The good part about books like The Hunger Games and its sequels is that it points out the unsavory aspect of this, while also reminding us that we're participating in the spectacle by reading and enjoying the book.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Politics in Science Fiction
Is it possible for a science fiction author to write a political novel without espousing a political point of view? Is that even a reasonable question?
Ursula LeGuin's book The Dispossessed poses a situation that seems to come out of the left/right debate of the middle twentieth century. It poses a situation where you have a planet named Urras with a moon named Anarres which is large enough to have its own atmosphere. Anarres can support life, although it is desert-like and resource-poor when compared to Urras. Approximately two hundred years before the events in the book take place, an anarchic worker's revolution took place on Urras, which has a culture and economic structures similar to modern earth, although the technology includes space travel, including travel to other planets, aided by an alien race called the Hain.
The story is about a physicist Shevek who grew up on Anarres, which had developed an anarchic/communist culture similar to that idealized by the twentieth century socialists and communists. He has developed a grand unifying theory of physics, which is radical enough that it threatens the bureaucratic systems that have grown on Annares. LeGuin makes quite clear that as Anarres matures, it's moving further and further away from the idealistic revolution that spawned the colony, and while in the early days of Anarres's history someone like Shevek would have been warmly embraced, now he is a problem.
Shevek eventually makes the short trip to Urras, an act nobody from Anarres has done for over one hundred years, in order to promote his theory. There he encounters a society much like modern America: exciting, creative, competitive, and at times decadent. Much of the difficulty Shevek encounters is in dealing with an individualistic, property-owning culture, quite different from the communal one he grew up in.
Clearly LeGuin's sympathies are with the revolutionaries on Anarres (as are mine). She poses a flawed paradise on a barren planet where people live in as best an egalitarian paradise as one might imagine, a place where people are not values by how much property the own but by their contributions to society. Yet she also describes Anarres as clearly a culture in decline, retreating from its original revolutionary fervor to the creation of the very bureaucracies it rebelled against, albeit with a different flavor than what might be found on Urras.
The question then becomes: Does LeGuin's political bias become an obstacle to the creation of a good novel? I would argue not. She makes a good case for the anarchic society on Anarres without turning the book into a polemic. One can disagree with LeGuin's sympathies, but one cannot say she poses a black/white situation in her novel. Anarres is clearly flawed, while Urras has a level of dynamism and creativity that Annares seem to lack.
Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers is another novel that discusses politics overtly. While Heinlein is personally associated with a more libertarian philosophy (whether this is his actual philosophy I'm not sure about), his novel about the military of the future has been popular and controversial. While the plot of the novel revolves around an interstellar conflict with a species of intelligent insects, the controversial section is about how society has changed because of the war. Heinlein poses a different view if citizenship than the current one. Since the war is so critical world society as a whole, what Heinlein proposes as full citizenship revolves around service to the government, and specifically military service, although society is required to find a place for anyone to serve, regardless of ability. It's a more limited and exclusive concept of democracy, revolving around implicit criticism of today's democracy where, “… people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.”
What people mostly react to about the book is whether it, through its specific necessity of military service to gain full citizenship, is a realistic or even morally appropriate requirement. After all, this means the person must risk his/her life in order to gain suffrage. Heinlein makes the point that this new was made after the fall of the western democracies, when veterans were a leading force to forge this new government. Whether this requirement is a moral one is best left to the reader, or course, but it does need to be said that the way Heinlein extolls the necessity of violence and the efficient way it solves problems can be troubling.
Yet these issues make a book interesting. Part of the appeal of Starship Troopers is that it's more than just a book about war; it's also a book about ideas. Whether you agree with Heinlein's point of view or not, it's a fun read, and the book makes you think. That's not a bad thing at all.
Ursula LeGuin's book The Dispossessed poses a situation that seems to come out of the left/right debate of the middle twentieth century. It poses a situation where you have a planet named Urras with a moon named Anarres which is large enough to have its own atmosphere. Anarres can support life, although it is desert-like and resource-poor when compared to Urras. Approximately two hundred years before the events in the book take place, an anarchic worker's revolution took place on Urras, which has a culture and economic structures similar to modern earth, although the technology includes space travel, including travel to other planets, aided by an alien race called the Hain.
The story is about a physicist Shevek who grew up on Anarres, which had developed an anarchic/communist culture similar to that idealized by the twentieth century socialists and communists. He has developed a grand unifying theory of physics, which is radical enough that it threatens the bureaucratic systems that have grown on Annares. LeGuin makes quite clear that as Anarres matures, it's moving further and further away from the idealistic revolution that spawned the colony, and while in the early days of Anarres's history someone like Shevek would have been warmly embraced, now he is a problem.
Shevek eventually makes the short trip to Urras, an act nobody from Anarres has done for over one hundred years, in order to promote his theory. There he encounters a society much like modern America: exciting, creative, competitive, and at times decadent. Much of the difficulty Shevek encounters is in dealing with an individualistic, property-owning culture, quite different from the communal one he grew up in.
Clearly LeGuin's sympathies are with the revolutionaries on Anarres (as are mine). She poses a flawed paradise on a barren planet where people live in as best an egalitarian paradise as one might imagine, a place where people are not values by how much property the own but by their contributions to society. Yet she also describes Anarres as clearly a culture in decline, retreating from its original revolutionary fervor to the creation of the very bureaucracies it rebelled against, albeit with a different flavor than what might be found on Urras.
The question then becomes: Does LeGuin's political bias become an obstacle to the creation of a good novel? I would argue not. She makes a good case for the anarchic society on Anarres without turning the book into a polemic. One can disagree with LeGuin's sympathies, but one cannot say she poses a black/white situation in her novel. Anarres is clearly flawed, while Urras has a level of dynamism and creativity that Annares seem to lack.
Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers is another novel that discusses politics overtly. While Heinlein is personally associated with a more libertarian philosophy (whether this is his actual philosophy I'm not sure about), his novel about the military of the future has been popular and controversial. While the plot of the novel revolves around an interstellar conflict with a species of intelligent insects, the controversial section is about how society has changed because of the war. Heinlein poses a different view if citizenship than the current one. Since the war is so critical world society as a whole, what Heinlein proposes as full citizenship revolves around service to the government, and specifically military service, although society is required to find a place for anyone to serve, regardless of ability. It's a more limited and exclusive concept of democracy, revolving around implicit criticism of today's democracy where, “… people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.”
What people mostly react to about the book is whether it, through its specific necessity of military service to gain full citizenship, is a realistic or even morally appropriate requirement. After all, this means the person must risk his/her life in order to gain suffrage. Heinlein makes the point that this new was made after the fall of the western democracies, when veterans were a leading force to forge this new government. Whether this requirement is a moral one is best left to the reader, or course, but it does need to be said that the way Heinlein extolls the necessity of violence and the efficient way it solves problems can be troubling.
Yet these issues make a book interesting. Part of the appeal of Starship Troopers is that it's more than just a book about war; it's also a book about ideas. Whether you agree with Heinlein's point of view or not, it's a fun read, and the book makes you think. That's not a bad thing at all.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Space Opera
Space opera is a branch of the science fiction genre. It's distinguished from “hard” science fiction, by its focus on adventure, melodrama, and romance in a science fiction setting (according to wikipedia, which actually is a very good source of information for all things geekish).
Space opera is the fun side of science fiction. This is where heroes leap into tiny space ships and hurl themselves at faster-than-light speeds to land another star system before lunch. This is where space fighters zoom through the air, dodging each other like 1940s Messerschmidts and Spitfires. This is where heroes leap from floating city to floating city, sometimes zapping bad guys with their laser gun, sometimes fencing with a medieval long sword.
The great part about space opera is how much fun it is. I remember as a boy, pouring through Edgar Rice Boroughs's John Carter, Warlord of Mars books and absolutely loving them. They were pure adventure, where a man from Earth magically appears on the surface of the dying Mars and eventually becomes its greatest champion, marrying the voluptuous space princess Deja Thoris. Of course, once they were married, our hero spent the rest of the books rescuing said princess from the nefarious forces of evil. Ahh, such is the genre; nobody ever has a relaxing day. Everyone's just so busy fighting the forces evil.
I think space opera is a genre that's there as fantasy fulfillment. It exists as a world for derring-do, for heroes to be heroes. The trouble is when people start taking space opera seriously as real science fiction, which is where Star Wars come in. Science has little bearing in the worlds of George Lucas, with a couple of exceptions. The world of Luke and Leia is one of adventure, where evil is always lurking close by (or at least a nearby star system), waiting and planning. When I was young I absolutely loved space opera.
But of course that changed. It's not that my taste gradually got more sophisticated. I still love sitting down in front of the TV and watching The Empire Strikes Back with my six year-old son. What happened is that I personally got tired of a universe set up specifically for the adventure. I learned that when there's a lot of violence, there's also blood and death (and I don't know about you, but death just takes away from the fun of a good battle). I learned that it takes a lot of farmers to support a few aristocrats, and the farmers' problems might be more real than any warrior born from nobility.
That's what makes a science fiction movie like Wall-E so successful. It's about a very common robot doing something very common, collecting garbage. When he meets the robot from the future, Eve, he's smitten. And even Eve isn't so uncommon. She's built to be a tough probe droid, with one arm functioning as a powerful laser cannon, but her slick iPod looks are really just a function of when and where she was built. These two electronic protagonists then discover that despite Earth's pollution, it can still support life. The rest of the movie is a struggle against the vested interests who want to keep the remains of humanity shut up in a large space ship.
Now Wall-E is a kids' movie at heart, so it breaks certain conventions of reality that might be a problem in a more sophisticated movie, but it does deal with the very real issue of our planet getting more and more polluted. The adventure comes out of that, as opposed to space opera where the entire universe seems structured around adventure.
Space opera is the fun side of science fiction. This is where heroes leap into tiny space ships and hurl themselves at faster-than-light speeds to land another star system before lunch. This is where space fighters zoom through the air, dodging each other like 1940s Messerschmidts and Spitfires. This is where heroes leap from floating city to floating city, sometimes zapping bad guys with their laser gun, sometimes fencing with a medieval long sword.
The great part about space opera is how much fun it is. I remember as a boy, pouring through Edgar Rice Boroughs's John Carter, Warlord of Mars books and absolutely loving them. They were pure adventure, where a man from Earth magically appears on the surface of the dying Mars and eventually becomes its greatest champion, marrying the voluptuous space princess Deja Thoris. Of course, once they were married, our hero spent the rest of the books rescuing said princess from the nefarious forces of evil. Ahh, such is the genre; nobody ever has a relaxing day. Everyone's just so busy fighting the forces evil.
I think space opera is a genre that's there as fantasy fulfillment. It exists as a world for derring-do, for heroes to be heroes. The trouble is when people start taking space opera seriously as real science fiction, which is where Star Wars come in. Science has little bearing in the worlds of George Lucas, with a couple of exceptions. The world of Luke and Leia is one of adventure, where evil is always lurking close by (or at least a nearby star system), waiting and planning. When I was young I absolutely loved space opera.
But of course that changed. It's not that my taste gradually got more sophisticated. I still love sitting down in front of the TV and watching The Empire Strikes Back with my six year-old son. What happened is that I personally got tired of a universe set up specifically for the adventure. I learned that when there's a lot of violence, there's also blood and death (and I don't know about you, but death just takes away from the fun of a good battle). I learned that it takes a lot of farmers to support a few aristocrats, and the farmers' problems might be more real than any warrior born from nobility.
That's what makes a science fiction movie like Wall-E so successful. It's about a very common robot doing something very common, collecting garbage. When he meets the robot from the future, Eve, he's smitten. And even Eve isn't so uncommon. She's built to be a tough probe droid, with one arm functioning as a powerful laser cannon, but her slick iPod looks are really just a function of when and where she was built. These two electronic protagonists then discover that despite Earth's pollution, it can still support life. The rest of the movie is a struggle against the vested interests who want to keep the remains of humanity shut up in a large space ship.
Now Wall-E is a kids' movie at heart, so it breaks certain conventions of reality that might be a problem in a more sophisticated movie, but it does deal with the very real issue of our planet getting more and more polluted. The adventure comes out of that, as opposed to space opera where the entire universe seems structured around adventure.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Independent Animated Science Fiction Video
Take the time to watch this science fiction video called “The incident at Tower 37” by filmmaker Chris Perry. This is a great “short” to show your class. It's appropriate even for middle school and younger ages.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Science Fiction At Its Best And Least
A lover of science fiction should check out Duncan Jones's 2009 movie Moon. This movie is pure science fiction without any of the silliness which accompanies most science fiction these days. The plot is very simple: Sam Bell is at the end of his three-year contract with Lunar Industries to harvest helium-3 from the dark side of the moon. The communications setup is damaged, so he can only speak to his family from a time-delay arrangement, bouncing the signal off an antenna on one of the outer planets. The only thing he can communicate with on a real-time basis is GERTY, his Hal-like computer companion. With two weeks to go on his contract, there is an accident at one of the harvesters. Sam goes to investigate, against company instructions, and makes a startling discovery.
No, I'm not going to spoil it, but suffice to say, the movie takes its idea to a very satisfying conclusion. Moon seems to hail from the science fiction of the 1970s, and I don't mean Star Wars. Moon is more in the vein of Silent Running or 2001, A Space Odyssey with its slower pacing and visual style. As well, the special effects are mostly “practical”, which means that they're done with models and miniatures, which gives the movie a much grittier feel than if the effects were done with computers. You can actually see the particles of dust everywhere. That may seem like a minor point, but nothing makes a special effect look real better than good, old-fashioned dirt.
As well, Moon also adheres to something called “science” with it's conventions. What I mean is that you don't get some of the silly scientific inconsistencies that tend to pop up in movies of this genre, like sound in space, space ships acting like they're flying in an atmosphere, or hyperdrives. (Hyperdrives I can accept as a necessary deus ex machina, but when you put them together with all other nonsense, the movie gets silly.) The only place the movie doesn't follow science conventions is in the space base where the main character moves about as if he's on earth with earth's gravity. Due to the low budget of this movie, made for an astounding $5 million dollars, I can forgive this.
If you want to see a movie with astounding special effects of zero gravity, watch Apollo 13. Yet here the word special effect should be used wisely, because the zero-gravity scenes in this movie aren't all effects; they're real weightlessness done on the Vomit Comet, a special airplane designed to briefly create a zero-gravity environment.
The unfortunate problem with Moon is that the language is, at times, rather adult, which makes it inappropriate for middle schoolers. That said, a high school teacher looking for a good “hard” science fiction movie need look no further. Even better, if you have a Netflix account, it's available for live streaming.
No, I'm not going to spoil it, but suffice to say, the movie takes its idea to a very satisfying conclusion. Moon seems to hail from the science fiction of the 1970s, and I don't mean Star Wars. Moon is more in the vein of Silent Running or 2001, A Space Odyssey with its slower pacing and visual style. As well, the special effects are mostly “practical”, which means that they're done with models and miniatures, which gives the movie a much grittier feel than if the effects were done with computers. You can actually see the particles of dust everywhere. That may seem like a minor point, but nothing makes a special effect look real better than good, old-fashioned dirt.
As well, Moon also adheres to something called “science” with it's conventions. What I mean is that you don't get some of the silly scientific inconsistencies that tend to pop up in movies of this genre, like sound in space, space ships acting like they're flying in an atmosphere, or hyperdrives. (Hyperdrives I can accept as a necessary deus ex machina, but when you put them together with all other nonsense, the movie gets silly.) The only place the movie doesn't follow science conventions is in the space base where the main character moves about as if he's on earth with earth's gravity. Due to the low budget of this movie, made for an astounding $5 million dollars, I can forgive this.
If you want to see a movie with astounding special effects of zero gravity, watch Apollo 13. Yet here the word special effect should be used wisely, because the zero-gravity scenes in this movie aren't all effects; they're real weightlessness done on the Vomit Comet, a special airplane designed to briefly create a zero-gravity environment.
The unfortunate problem with Moon is that the language is, at times, rather adult, which makes it inappropriate for middle schoolers. That said, a high school teacher looking for a good “hard” science fiction movie need look no further. Even better, if you have a Netflix account, it's available for live streaming.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Link to Trends in Science Fiction and Fantasy
One of my favorite websites is io9.com, which is a site dedicated to science fiction and fantasy in literature and movies. Besides the usual news and rumors about upcoming movies, there are some good essays abut science fiction trends. Those I enjoy the most.
The only problem with io9 is that it's a Gawker Media site. That means it's occasionally NSFW (Not Safe For Work), which means it's also NSFK (Not Safe For Kids). The language is fine, but sometimes the media links can get rather raunchy. It's a good resource for information, but I might not share it with my students, especially middle school students.
I also get jealous of the profiles of published authors, because I'm still trying to get my book published. Argh!
The only problem with io9 is that it's a Gawker Media site. That means it's occasionally NSFW (Not Safe For Work), which means it's also NSFK (Not Safe For Kids). The language is fine, but sometimes the media links can get rather raunchy. It's a good resource for information, but I might not share it with my students, especially middle school students.
I also get jealous of the profiles of published authors, because I'm still trying to get my book published. Argh!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Visions of the Future: A TV Show Starring Isaac Azimov
I adore Isaac Azimov. As one of the early greats of science fiction, he took the science part very seriously. In 1992, he filmed a TV pilot about trends in technology and where the human race was heading, called Visions of the Future. Unfortunately this was never aired, but the footage of the pilot is now available.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
A Brief History of Science Fiction
Author Pamela J. Dodd did a nice quick history of science fiction in a three minute Youtube video. Enjoy!
Friday, March 11, 2011
Getting Controversial With Science Fiction
One of the neat things about science fiction is how easily it lends itself to examining our society in metaphor. One can use this technique to deal with controversial subjects with an elegance that sometimes eludes realism.
Take for example the Twilight Zone tale “The Monster Are Due on Maple Street”. (You can watch parts one, two and three here on Youtube.) This story, and you should watch the episode if you're not familiar with it, is a metaphor for the McCarthyite anticommunist scares that swept over the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This was a time when people were hauled off in front of congressional committees where they had to prove they were sufficiently patriotic in order to not be labeled a communist. The fear of being called a communist was so intense that people would often, to the pleasure of the House on Unamerican Activities Committee, name names of people, who would then be accused. And so the circle ran. It was an awful time in American history. People's careers, including my grandfather's and great uncles, were ruined because of these accusations. Senator McCarthy's fall came none too quickly.
Clearly Rod Serling was highly aware of this. He must have had great sympathy for the people who were unjustly hauled off and accused of being unpatriotic. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a very clever allegory of this time. After a strange light flies overhead, the machines and electricity on Maple Street stop working. This causes general unease until a boy relates how these events closely follow the plots of alien invasions in his comic books. Then the unease coalesces into paranoia, and then one after another each neighbor is accused of being an alien. Every idiosyncrasy of each person is exposed to the light of this court of your peers and no person is above suspicion. The story ends with a tragic and sinister note, for after Maple Street descends into a riot, the camera pulls back and we see that two aliens actually have been the puppet masters of the entire scene, allowing humans in their paranoia, to destroy themselves.
Serling avoids any real partisanship here by avoiding the issue of communism entirely, making the paranoia the focus of the story. As the suspicion in the neighborhood increases, the watcher gets a sense of dread, knowing that unless something intervenes onto this simmering pot, it will end tragically. He's making a strong case for acceptance of each other's idiosyncrasies, for the alternative is horrible.
While allegory can be a very clunky thing, this story is a good example of how science fiction can use that technique and deal with a controversial topic. A realistic story of this nature might be accused of being partisan and unpatriotic (then and now), but by taking the paranoia out of its political context, Serling makes a strong point about what it means to be a neighbor. Alien invasion is still a pretty unrealistic thing, thank goodness, but that's the strength of the episode. By making the fear, the MacGuffin, something essentially ridiculous, we're free to see how the paranoia plays out without getting involved with the fear itself.
Take for example the Twilight Zone tale “The Monster Are Due on Maple Street”. (You can watch parts one, two and three here on Youtube.) This story, and you should watch the episode if you're not familiar with it, is a metaphor for the McCarthyite anticommunist scares that swept over the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This was a time when people were hauled off in front of congressional committees where they had to prove they were sufficiently patriotic in order to not be labeled a communist. The fear of being called a communist was so intense that people would often, to the pleasure of the House on Unamerican Activities Committee, name names of people, who would then be accused. And so the circle ran. It was an awful time in American history. People's careers, including my grandfather's and great uncles, were ruined because of these accusations. Senator McCarthy's fall came none too quickly.
Clearly Rod Serling was highly aware of this. He must have had great sympathy for the people who were unjustly hauled off and accused of being unpatriotic. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a very clever allegory of this time. After a strange light flies overhead, the machines and electricity on Maple Street stop working. This causes general unease until a boy relates how these events closely follow the plots of alien invasions in his comic books. Then the unease coalesces into paranoia, and then one after another each neighbor is accused of being an alien. Every idiosyncrasy of each person is exposed to the light of this court of your peers and no person is above suspicion. The story ends with a tragic and sinister note, for after Maple Street descends into a riot, the camera pulls back and we see that two aliens actually have been the puppet masters of the entire scene, allowing humans in their paranoia, to destroy themselves.
Serling avoids any real partisanship here by avoiding the issue of communism entirely, making the paranoia the focus of the story. As the suspicion in the neighborhood increases, the watcher gets a sense of dread, knowing that unless something intervenes onto this simmering pot, it will end tragically. He's making a strong case for acceptance of each other's idiosyncrasies, for the alternative is horrible.
While allegory can be a very clunky thing, this story is a good example of how science fiction can use that technique and deal with a controversial topic. A realistic story of this nature might be accused of being partisan and unpatriotic (then and now), but by taking the paranoia out of its political context, Serling makes a strong point about what it means to be a neighbor. Alien invasion is still a pretty unrealistic thing, thank goodness, but that's the strength of the episode. By making the fear, the MacGuffin, something essentially ridiculous, we're free to see how the paranoia plays out without getting involved with the fear itself.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Do We Live in a Science Fiction World?
One of my favorite scenes from David Lynch 1984 production of Frank Herbert's novel Dune is in the beginning of the movie when Paul Atreides, the protagonist, looks at a book-sized computer. It has a video screen that teaches him (and provides exposition to the viewer). Check this out.
Here's the unit.
In it you can scan libraries of information. In this case, Paul is looking up different planets.
Look, you can enter search terms.
You can even watch videos on it!
Does this device, or at least it's concept, look familiar?
Friday, March 4, 2011
History of Science Fiction Video, Featuring Isaac Azimov, part 2
Here's the second part of those Isaac Azimov videos:
HIstory of Science Fiction Video, Featuring Isaac Azimov, part 1
Here's the first part video of Isaac Azimov speaking about the history of science fiction. I'm going to post these in two separate blog entries because blogger is having some formatting issues with YouTube videos:
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Teaching Science Fiction Website
There's a great website for teaching science fiction at the college level. This is the website of the Center for the Teaching of Science Fiction. The address is:
http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/teaching.htm
If you start with this page, you'll begin with a good essay by James Gunn about the value of teaching science fiction and some of the history of teaching science fiction at the college level. Check it out.
http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/teaching.htm
If you start with this page, you'll begin with a good essay by James Gunn about the value of teaching science fiction and some of the history of teaching science fiction at the college level. Check it out.
“The Tempest” and Science Fiction
While as a teacher you may be teaching The Tempest as a fantasy novel, or, as it's categorized in the Shakespeare canon, as a romance, the play also has some decent science fiction cred as well. The 1956 classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet is a really fun remake of the story. In it, the space ship C-57D lands on the planet Altair IV (captained by the late Leslie Neilson) to check up on a colony that landed there twenty years before. All members of the colony are dead except for a Doctor Morbius and his daughter Altaira. Without going into the plot too much, suffice to say the movie is a satisfying retelling of this classic story.
My favorite parts of the movie are the way Ariel and Caliban are transformed into science fiction ideas. Ariel, the faithful, powerful servant, is transformed into Robbie the Robot. Instead of the ethereal and graceful “airy spirit”, we get a clumsy but impressive creation. The most notable scene with him, perhaps, is when Morbius demonstrates to the visiting crew of the ship Robbie's power and limitations. Robbie has the power to lift tons, but his programming makes him unable to hurt a living human being, shades of Isaac Azimov's I Robot books.
Caliban seems nowhere to be found at first, except for a trouble fact the crew of the C-57D are bothered by: the mysterious deaths of all the other members of the expedition. As Morbius reveals more and more about his life on the planet, we learn that Morbius has discovered the remnants of a fabulously advanced civilization that once existed on Altair IV, the Krell. The Doctor has even learned how to harness some of the Krell's technology, increasing his own intellect far beyond what is was. Here we have the science fiction analog to Prospero's magic, advanced alien technology. This a trope used perhaps far too often here, but the presentation of it in this movie, combined with the still impressive special effects of the underground Krell technology, make it work.
But back to Caliban. We learn that the colonists' deaths seemed to coincide with a plan to leave Altair IV, a move Morbius disagreed with intensely. Concurrent with these events, a strange, invisible creature begins wrecking havoc with the landed space sip. An important part disappears, then a crewman dies. After a defensive perimeter is set up around the ship, the creature is halted, but not after its horrifying silhouette appears in a blaze of laser fire. This creature, the ship's doctor exclaims after examining its footsteps, cannot exist. It doesn't follow any known rule of evolution. As Morbius is confronted, the ship's captain realizes that the creature is a projection of Morbius's own personality, his “id” in Freudian terms, amplified by the Krell apparatus inside the planet. This means that the original colonists died because Morbius killed them subconsciously because they disagreed with his decision to leave the planet.
While students may argue or not whether Freud's concept of the “id” actually exists, this movie does present a good basis for that conversation. Caliban here is the unconscious, and what teenager cannot relate to anger or other emotions which cannot be expressed publicly? Caliban too in The Tempest occupies that same emotional space, displaying the savage base desires that Prospero fears. While the “id” creature in Forbidden Planet is far more savage than Prospero's servant/slave, the science fiction setting with it's advanced weapons and scanning instruments seems to allow for the more dangerous foe.
My favorite parts of the movie are the way Ariel and Caliban are transformed into science fiction ideas. Ariel, the faithful, powerful servant, is transformed into Robbie the Robot. Instead of the ethereal and graceful “airy spirit”, we get a clumsy but impressive creation. The most notable scene with him, perhaps, is when Morbius demonstrates to the visiting crew of the ship Robbie's power and limitations. Robbie has the power to lift tons, but his programming makes him unable to hurt a living human being, shades of Isaac Azimov's I Robot books.
Caliban seems nowhere to be found at first, except for a trouble fact the crew of the C-57D are bothered by: the mysterious deaths of all the other members of the expedition. As Morbius reveals more and more about his life on the planet, we learn that Morbius has discovered the remnants of a fabulously advanced civilization that once existed on Altair IV, the Krell. The Doctor has even learned how to harness some of the Krell's technology, increasing his own intellect far beyond what is was. Here we have the science fiction analog to Prospero's magic, advanced alien technology. This a trope used perhaps far too often here, but the presentation of it in this movie, combined with the still impressive special effects of the underground Krell technology, make it work.
But back to Caliban. We learn that the colonists' deaths seemed to coincide with a plan to leave Altair IV, a move Morbius disagreed with intensely. Concurrent with these events, a strange, invisible creature begins wrecking havoc with the landed space sip. An important part disappears, then a crewman dies. After a defensive perimeter is set up around the ship, the creature is halted, but not after its horrifying silhouette appears in a blaze of laser fire. This creature, the ship's doctor exclaims after examining its footsteps, cannot exist. It doesn't follow any known rule of evolution. As Morbius is confronted, the ship's captain realizes that the creature is a projection of Morbius's own personality, his “id” in Freudian terms, amplified by the Krell apparatus inside the planet. This means that the original colonists died because Morbius killed them subconsciously because they disagreed with his decision to leave the planet.
While students may argue or not whether Freud's concept of the “id” actually exists, this movie does present a good basis for that conversation. Caliban here is the unconscious, and what teenager cannot relate to anger or other emotions which cannot be expressed publicly? Caliban too in The Tempest occupies that same emotional space, displaying the savage base desires that Prospero fears. While the “id” creature in Forbidden Planet is far more savage than Prospero's servant/slave, the science fiction setting with it's advanced weapons and scanning instruments seems to allow for the more dangerous foe.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Why Isn't “Star Wars” Science Fiction?
Star Wars is the first example of science fiction most people think of, but it's barely science fiction. Here's why:
Science fiction is about ideas. It's about the exploration of a concept in science or technology and seeing its effect on society. What is the idea behind Star Wars?
If you ignore the science fiction setting, the Star Wars movies don't deal with science fiction issues very much. They deal with the battle between good and evil, which are differentiated quite clearly. There's very little middle ground. As well, this battle between good and evil is what sets off the action. These movies are much more like a fantasy story in a science fiction setting.
How could I claim that Star Wars is fantasy? The main heroes fight with swords (mostly). The heroes (and a couple of villains) use a magical power to gain an advantage over most of their enemies. At best, the struggle is a conversation about what kind of government is better for a galaxy, a dictatorial bureaucracy or a looser, more democratic system. Interestingly, the movies make a point that the dictatorial bureaucracy is much more efficient than a democracy, an important theme of the three prequel movies where the initial democracy is seen as inefficient and corrupt. Yet this argument tends to fall apart because we never really see what kind of government replaces the empire. At the end of The Return of the Jedi the evil emperor had been defeated, but we don't see what kind of government the rebels replace the empire with.
The best science fiction idea from Star Wars is probably the concept of the Death Star. Unfortunately, the idea of a weapon so strong it can destroy another planet isn't really a new one, nor is presented in a particularly innovative way. A better example of this might be the classic Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine”, where an automated “planet killer” is roaming through our galaxy, munching on planets (and star ships) for fuel. Its hull is impenetrable, which makes it a very difficult thing to kill. It's certainly nothing a lone snub-fighter could destroy, with a precision attack on a stupid design flaw.
Where Star Wars does become science fiction is in its setting, yet I would argue that may not be enough to make it a science fiction story. The different planets in the Star Wars universe are well-researched in terms of their ecosystems. As well, the space ship designs employ a certain wild creativity that makes them fascinating to look at. At best, Star Wars is the kind of science fiction called space opera, a type of science fiction story that emphasizes adventure and romance. We have lots of examples of space opera, from the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon stories to the novels of E.E. “Doc” Smith and the the John Carter, Warlord of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. These stories are fun but not really “serious” in the same sense of H.G. Wells. Star Wars certainly isn't as goofy as some of the Buck Rogers stories (or as racist), but it shares this genre's focus on melodrama and adventure.
So when you talk about science fiction in your classrooms, keep in mind that the most recognizable example of the genre barely fits within the genre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera
The classic Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine”, written by Normal Spinrad.
The Star Wars movies, episodes 4–6, and 1–3 (regretfully)
Science fiction is about ideas. It's about the exploration of a concept in science or technology and seeing its effect on society. What is the idea behind Star Wars?
If you ignore the science fiction setting, the Star Wars movies don't deal with science fiction issues very much. They deal with the battle between good and evil, which are differentiated quite clearly. There's very little middle ground. As well, this battle between good and evil is what sets off the action. These movies are much more like a fantasy story in a science fiction setting.
How could I claim that Star Wars is fantasy? The main heroes fight with swords (mostly). The heroes (and a couple of villains) use a magical power to gain an advantage over most of their enemies. At best, the struggle is a conversation about what kind of government is better for a galaxy, a dictatorial bureaucracy or a looser, more democratic system. Interestingly, the movies make a point that the dictatorial bureaucracy is much more efficient than a democracy, an important theme of the three prequel movies where the initial democracy is seen as inefficient and corrupt. Yet this argument tends to fall apart because we never really see what kind of government replaces the empire. At the end of The Return of the Jedi the evil emperor had been defeated, but we don't see what kind of government the rebels replace the empire with.
The best science fiction idea from Star Wars is probably the concept of the Death Star. Unfortunately, the idea of a weapon so strong it can destroy another planet isn't really a new one, nor is presented in a particularly innovative way. A better example of this might be the classic Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine”, where an automated “planet killer” is roaming through our galaxy, munching on planets (and star ships) for fuel. Its hull is impenetrable, which makes it a very difficult thing to kill. It's certainly nothing a lone snub-fighter could destroy, with a precision attack on a stupid design flaw.
Where Star Wars does become science fiction is in its setting, yet I would argue that may not be enough to make it a science fiction story. The different planets in the Star Wars universe are well-researched in terms of their ecosystems. As well, the space ship designs employ a certain wild creativity that makes them fascinating to look at. At best, Star Wars is the kind of science fiction called space opera, a type of science fiction story that emphasizes adventure and romance. We have lots of examples of space opera, from the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon stories to the novels of E.E. “Doc” Smith and the the John Carter, Warlord of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. These stories are fun but not really “serious” in the same sense of H.G. Wells. Star Wars certainly isn't as goofy as some of the Buck Rogers stories (or as racist), but it shares this genre's focus on melodrama and adventure.
So when you talk about science fiction in your classrooms, keep in mind that the most recognizable example of the genre barely fits within the genre.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera
The classic Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine”, written by Normal Spinrad.
The Star Wars movies, episodes 4–6, and 1–3 (regretfully)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Teach the “What If” Question: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
As I mentioned in the blog entry, science fiction as a genre is a thought experiment. It is an exploration of one or more aspects of science or technology which asks a “What if…?” question. Let's explore a couple of important science fiction novels to understand this idea.
Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written in 1869. It asks the question, “What if a man built a vessel that could go underwater and make war upon other vessels?” He must have been inspired not only by the recent invention of a French submarine, the Plongeur, but also of the clash of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac during the American Civil War.
A vessel that can travel underwater and attack other ships? What an insane prediction! That could never come true! And, of course, it did, although not entirely the way Verne predicted. The submarine in the novel attacks other ships with a large ram in its nose, not unlike how classical triremes would attack each other. Verne knew, or course, that a modern cannon would not work underwater, but he did not anticipate the invention of the modern torpedo.
Yet Verne's concept of the submarine also included men who would leave the sub in suits with their own oxygen supply. These suits are clumsy and heavy, requiring its user to walk slowly upon the bottom of the ocean instead of swimming, but they are harbingers of a new era of underwater exploration.
What makes this book an interesting case to teach is that it's a case where the author made predictions which have already come to pass. We as modern readers get a unique opportunity to comment on and perhaps criticize Verne's ideas. An enterprising teacher could create a series of slides from submarines from antiquity to modern submarines. (Here's a useful link for that.) One might do the same with underwater suits, from clumsy diving bells to SCUBA and beyond.
Furthermore, students could spend a lesson predicting what vessels of the future would look like and engage in the same type of thought experiment that Verne did. Any type of vessel would be appropriate: cars, ships, submarines, space craft, airplanes, etc. I would suggest in this that you hold your students to a rough sort of scientific scrutiny. Have them take ideas that exist now and predict how they will change, rather than invent ideas that couldn't exist with a violation of the laws of physics. For example, a space ship with a kind of “star drive” that would propel it to other solar systems would be okay, but a space ship that would magically teleport itself would probably not be in the spirit of this assignment.
If you're going to teach this boo, I would also recommend the fun Walt Disney movie of the book. It has some changes from the book, notably Captain Nemo is changed from an Indian to a generic European (James Mason), but it is a faithful reproduction of the spirit of the book. It's a lot a fun, especially during the battle with the giant squid.
http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2009/04/book-review-20000-leagues-under-sea.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20,000_Leagues_Under_The_Sea
Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written in 1869. It asks the question, “What if a man built a vessel that could go underwater and make war upon other vessels?” He must have been inspired not only by the recent invention of a French submarine, the Plongeur, but also of the clash of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac during the American Civil War.
A vessel that can travel underwater and attack other ships? What an insane prediction! That could never come true! And, of course, it did, although not entirely the way Verne predicted. The submarine in the novel attacks other ships with a large ram in its nose, not unlike how classical triremes would attack each other. Verne knew, or course, that a modern cannon would not work underwater, but he did not anticipate the invention of the modern torpedo.
Yet Verne's concept of the submarine also included men who would leave the sub in suits with their own oxygen supply. These suits are clumsy and heavy, requiring its user to walk slowly upon the bottom of the ocean instead of swimming, but they are harbingers of a new era of underwater exploration.
What makes this book an interesting case to teach is that it's a case where the author made predictions which have already come to pass. We as modern readers get a unique opportunity to comment on and perhaps criticize Verne's ideas. An enterprising teacher could create a series of slides from submarines from antiquity to modern submarines. (Here's a useful link for that.) One might do the same with underwater suits, from clumsy diving bells to SCUBA and beyond.
Furthermore, students could spend a lesson predicting what vessels of the future would look like and engage in the same type of thought experiment that Verne did. Any type of vessel would be appropriate: cars, ships, submarines, space craft, airplanes, etc. I would suggest in this that you hold your students to a rough sort of scientific scrutiny. Have them take ideas that exist now and predict how they will change, rather than invent ideas that couldn't exist with a violation of the laws of physics. For example, a space ship with a kind of “star drive” that would propel it to other solar systems would be okay, but a space ship that would magically teleport itself would probably not be in the spirit of this assignment.
If you're going to teach this boo, I would also recommend the fun Walt Disney movie of the book. It has some changes from the book, notably Captain Nemo is changed from an Indian to a generic European (James Mason), but it is a faithful reproduction of the spirit of the book. It's a lot a fun, especially during the battle with the giant squid.
Sources:
http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2009/04/book-review-20000-leagues-under-sea.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20,000_Leagues_Under_The_Sea
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Why Teach Science Fiction?
If it's a teacher's job to get a student ready for the real world, what business does he/she have to be teaching books that, on the surface, have little or nothing to do with reality? Why teach speculative literature? This is a valid question, and the answers may be surprising. It might make sense to address fantasy and science fiction differently because, while they both share a certain “unreality”, the genres deal with very different issues.
Science fiction is the literature of the possible. It is a literature that (at its best) examines trends in technology, science and society and extrapolates what might be a result of that literature. It is literature, I like to say, that asks a “What if…” question, then proceeds to answer it.
Of course, this is a description of good science fiction. There's a lot of bad literature, cinema, and TV out there too which has little to say beyond offering a brief, entertaining diversion. The good stuff is what we want to pay attention to as teachers. The science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon is famous for saying:
“I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.” (Venture Magazine, March 1958)
In other words, 90% of science fiction is lousy, but then again 90% of all art is lousy. As teachers, we have little time to waste with bad science fiction, so we here will stick with the good stuff.
Getting back to the “Why we should teach science fiction” question, there are few forms of art that address our contemporary society and its needs like science fiction can. We live in a science fiction world now. We live in a world where technology is allowing people to do extraordinary things, and science fiction is the literature that deals with the consequences of what we're creating. When the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line was opened in 1844, Samuel Morse's first morse code message was “What hath God wrought?” This quote from Numbers 23:23 asks us all, what kind of world are we making with our technology? Science fiction is a literature that attempts to answer that question.
Science fiction is the literature of the possible. It is a literature that (at its best) examines trends in technology, science and society and extrapolates what might be a result of that literature. It is literature, I like to say, that asks a “What if…” question, then proceeds to answer it.
Of course, this is a description of good science fiction. There's a lot of bad literature, cinema, and TV out there too which has little to say beyond offering a brief, entertaining diversion. The good stuff is what we want to pay attention to as teachers. The science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon is famous for saying:
“I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.” (Venture Magazine, March 1958)
In other words, 90% of science fiction is lousy, but then again 90% of all art is lousy. As teachers, we have little time to waste with bad science fiction, so we here will stick with the good stuff.
Getting back to the “Why we should teach science fiction” question, there are few forms of art that address our contemporary society and its needs like science fiction can. We live in a science fiction world now. We live in a world where technology is allowing people to do extraordinary things, and science fiction is the literature that deals with the consequences of what we're creating. When the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line was opened in 1844, Samuel Morse's first morse code message was “What hath God wrought?” This quote from Numbers 23:23 asks us all, what kind of world are we making with our technology? Science fiction is a literature that attempts to answer that question.
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