SF, SciFi, SyFy, & "Scientificky Fiction"

I was thinking this morning about what it is I tell myself I write, and what it is most people really want and what they really like these days. SF, or Science Fiction, historically strove to "get the science right." That having been said, even hard SF often got it wrong, and still does. What most readers I think want these days are stories that have the same feel as the movies they are used to seeing. Most of today's readers grew up or came of age with the legacy of Star Wars. The original is a fun classic, available on free TV hundreds of times a year. It more than any other movie brought about the era of the special effects spectacular. Yes, others came first, but others didn't have people coming back 12 times to see it, and standing in long lines every time.

The thing is, Star Wars is not science fiction, not in the classic sense anyway. It's been called space opera, and space fantasy, because the science in it is largely atrocious and inconsistent. But I think I prefer the term "scientificky fiction," not as a label, but as a descriptor.

The last couple of generations grew up with spectacular SF movies, in the sense that they were spectacles, in much the same way the previous generation grew up with Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. Neither of these movies accurately reflect the eras they depict, no more so than the current crop of pirate movies depicts life on a pirate ship 200 years ago accurately. For that matter, few westerns got the facts of the old west right, either.

What people want in westerns are the trappings of westerns--horses and guns and good guys and bad. What we want in historical books and movies is not reality, but rather, those things we are used to picturing as part of the past. And yes, it is OK to have 17th century heroines with access to all the latest hair care products and a blow drier, at least in how we describe them. In SF, it is OK to just add in the scientificky parts to make it an SF movie, because it is for entertainment. Pretty much no one gives a damn that Transformer robots are physically impossible to build and behave as they do unless you invent a whole bunch of science we don't know about. For that matter, few people have any idea that the previous sentence is true, let alone why. And they don't care. They want to be entertained, and when I write these days I have to ask myself if I want to be the scientist or the entertainer.

Some may lament that scientific accuracy in SF is essentially unable to go any lower these days. But in terms of entertainment value and popularity, SF has finally caught up with, and I think surpassed, every other genre. And the fact is most viewers don't think what they see in a scifi movie is any more real than the flying broomsticks in Harry Potter. But damn, quidditch is fun to watch!