Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Well, he may not be in Star Wars but...

I love Arnold Schwarzenegger!!! Now, that being said, it would have to follow that I enjoy sci-fi movies since he has carved out his own niche within the genre. Of course, there was the occasional Kindergarten Cop or Jingle All the Way, but he's got Terminator, Predator, The Running Man, and Total Recall to name a few blockbuster sci-fi films. I think the facination with action and fantasy from an early age (at age 4, my favorite movies were The Little Mermaid and First Blood) led me to actually become familiar with sci-fi since it tends to encompass both. Additionally, my dad is a big fan of the genre, so he was always getting my brother and I to watch things like Bladerunner, Stargate, etc., and my mom is a trekkie, so I was obviously influenced by them. Some of my recent sci-fi favorites in television and film (obviously, sans Arnold since he has been busy being a governor and all) include Repo Men and the series Caprica. I will watch any movie the Syfy network puts out, and I always like movies based Phillip K. Dick's work. Also, I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I watched and really liked this movie called Repo: The Genetic Opera, which features Paris Hilton (who really stretches herself as an actress by playing a wealthy, spoiled heiress).

As far as literature goes, my experience is definitely more limited. My taste in books has always been heavy on fantasy of the magical, mythical sort. I did read and enjoy Brave New World, Jurassic Park, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the first book in the Artemis Fowl series. As I said in class, I took a course on anthropology in fiction, and there were quite a few short stories, all of them science fiction, that we read for discussion. I liked the stories, but I don't remember the authors' names, so I'll have to look through my stuff to make note of those writers.

In attempting to define science fiction, I think it is important to first make the relationship between sci-fi and fantasy distinct; personally, I agree with notion that sci-fi is a sub-genre of fantasy, not a totally separate genre of its own. Now, one must specify what qualifies a work as not merely fantasy, but fantasy of the sci-fi persuasion. I think sci-fi must allude to use of technology, either futuristic or alternative in nature to that known and used in the reader's world, and the consequences of this technology's employment. These consequences, whether positive or negative, serve as a setting unknown to us that we can use to discover things about ourselves. How would life adapt to a given situation?

1 comment:

Mark Penner said...

I really like the sci-fi/fantasy link that you have drawn. I seems to me that both very closely related. However, I feel that perhaps fantasy is more often concerned about the hero's journey than science fiction is.

Obviously there are exceptions, such as Card's Ender Saga, but such seems to me to be the rule.