Science Fiction

[parma_violets]

Recently, and largely in response to my reviews of the new series of Doctor Who, I've been challenged by some friends to define what it is I don't like about science fiction. I must say, it wasn't always this way; I was quite a fan when I was younger, but increasingly it seems to be the genre that turns me off more than any other

Comments

[demona_hw]

I actually think Firefly is better than Buffy. At it's best (by which I mostly mean season 3) Buffy was some of the best television I've seen, but the quality of a lot of the other seasons I think had to be taken into account.

Firefly was great straight off the bat. Partly no doubt because the writers had a lot more experience by that point (although that wasn't so evident in late Buffy and Angel), partly because they had a much better cast. A lot of the actors in Buffy weren't very good, and while they certainly grew into the roles I think there was always some deficiency.

Of course Firefly only got half a season (although it included single episodes to rivel the quality of much more long-standing shows), and as far as I can tell the stumbling block was the spaceships. Buffy and Angel fans by and large did not transfer to Firefly because they thought it wasn't their thing. One year after it was cancelled a lot of them get round to watching it on the DVD release and suddenly start going "Hey! This is great!" but far too late to save the show.

A lot of sf only belongs to the genre because it has spaceships, or a future setting, or robots or whatever. That doesn't make it any less part of the genre than Asimov or Clarke, but neither should it put people off because they think it will have the weighty concepts of hard sf.

My own preference is for something that falls between the extremes. I want the sci-fi concepts to be used to facilitate a story or themes which could not be carried out in a different setting, but I want to see the themes explored through characters and human drama. Giles may well correct me on this (he's at a half-life-athon by the way, then we're moving Tim in, so it may be a while before he sees this thread) but I think even hard sf is usually concerned with the effect of scientific knowledge and the use of science as it affects humans, even if examined in a rather dry way.