Random Sci-Fi Thoughts

I have often said, "There is a fundamental difference between a normal person and a sci-fi fan: a normal person actually likes sci-fi".  If I take my mom to see a Star Wars prequel or an odd-numbered Star Trek film, she'll come back saying, "That was a pretty fun space movie."  But if I take a true sci-fi fan - even if it's to a really good movie - for the next few hours I'll be subjected to diatribes about the technical mistakes, followed by rants about how modern science fiction isn't as good as the works of Isaac Asimov or Phillip K. Dick.

There's a reason people like this get ostracized.  It's not because they're smarter than everyone else; there's plenty of popular smart people.  It's because it's just not fun hanging around people who hate everything.  It's a simple rule; when even the nerds want to kick you in the nuts, the problem is you. 

A friend posted this webcomic declaring Star Wars to be fantasy, not sci-fi.  For the most part, I agree. However, he's never going to be able to hold a job at a video store.  To quote his accompanying blog:

Hugo Gernsback, considered by many to be the father of sci-fi (and whose name you can see in, you know, the HUGO Awards) established the criteria a work had to meet to be considered science fiction:

1) The author must know science.
2) The author must be able to play with breakthrough theories and delve into how they would affect society.

So yeah,  I can totally agree there, but it's just a semantic argument.  For one thing, Gernsback actually pushed for the cumbersome term "scientifiction", so clearly he understood science more than marketing.  My personal take?  There's "Science Fiction" and there's "Sci-Fi".  Science fiction" refers to stories that actually speculate about unknown aspects of science, attempt to predict science related things (the future of technology, the biology of alien species, etc), and in general are written by people who know what they are talking about.  Sci-fi refers to stories that happen to take place in space and/or in the future, or deal with futuristic elements like aliens or robots, but that concentrate more on entertaining you than getting their facts right.

Or for a more cynical take:  If they're on a spaceship and it bores you, it's science fiction.  If they're on a spaceship and stuff blows up, it's sci-fi.

There's plenty of room for overlap there.  You can easily be more than one thing.  Star Trek is both science fiction and sci-fi, depending on the episode or the writer.  Star Wars is both fantasy and sci-fi, but rarely really touches science fiction.  Alien is both sci-fi and horror. Aliens is both sci-fi and action. Alien 3 is both sci-fi and garbage.

What bugs me is when people try to shy away from the "sci-fi" stigma. You know, the ones who say, "Don't call my book sci-fi!  Sure, it's set in space and has robots, but it's a love story, dang it!"  Twenty years ago, sure, but today?  Right now there is not a single intelligent person on Earth who doesn't love sci-fi.  Be proud of your work!  Such a tiny percentage of people actually manage to get anything published.  No matter how hard you work, becoming a well-known author or director is still like winning the lottery.  You just sound whiny when your work doesn't get reviewed and categorized exactly the way you wanted.

I do think it's weird that the Sci-Fi channel didn't seem to mind the stigma back when it was considered nerdy, but then changed their name to SyFy after sci-fi became mainstream.  That might not be why they actually changed it, but I still think it's a funny observation.

So anyway, you can rationalize all you want about how Star Wars is technically not science fiction, and I probably won't disagree with your points. But you have to admit when you're browsing Netflix and want to watch Star Wars, you're going to head for the sci-fi section.