Kevin Ahearn writes about...
Science Fiction and “Sci-Fi”
In the foreword of a 1978 sf encyclopedia, Isaac Asimov wrote that “the richness of science fiction [is] that no two of its practitioners are liable to agree on even something as fundamental as its definition — or on the boundaries that encompass it, and on where one draws the dividing line between itself and realistic fiction, or between itself and fantasy.”
Then came “sci-fi.” Are sci-fi and science fiction (sf) synonymous? Is sf strictly books and sci-fi TV and movies? Is sf the good stuff and sci-fi the rest? None are the case, but there is a “dividing line.”
HG Wells’ 1898 War of the Worlds is considered the prototype sf novel, while the earlier Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde were not. Let the “practitioners” argue about that, but none was ever labeled sci-fi in its original form. Then along came the marketeers. Their mission was to make sf palatable, to sell sf to the masses. They created sci-fi.
Who was the first? Irwin Allen? Rod Serling? George Pal? No, the title of “Father of Sci-Fi” belongs to none other than Orson Welles whose 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, rewritten to begin in present-day New Jersey and destroy (and panic) much of America, ushered in what we now call “sci-fi.”
The later film, also tailored for American audiences, was sci-fi as will be the Spielberg/Cruise mega-production. The English are having none of that and will bring Wells’ novel to the screen word by word. British science fiction vs. American sci-fi — talk about war of the worlds.
Science fiction can be called “The Mother of Sci-Fi” because all sci-fi comes from ideas and concepts first introduced in science fiction. But the two can sometimes be inseparable. Boulle’s short novel Monkey Planet was written as “a joke.” Hollywood took the author seriously for Planet of the Apes. If you interpreted the stunning conclusion as simply that Taylor — “You maniacs! You blew it up” — had been on earth all along, then the film was sci-fi. If you looked deeper, to the more profound truth, that for all their flaws, fears and foibles, the apes were more human than we ever were, that’s science fiction.
It isn’t the science that has made great sf, but the fiction imaginative science creates — the human experience that only sf can deliver. Frankenstein, 2001, I, Robot, the original Star Wars trilogy, and the classic Star Trek have one vital component in common: the very last character you would suspect of having any humanity becomes the most human of all. Star Wars from Luke’s point of view is sci-fi. So is Trek through the eyes of Kirk. Hook up with Vader and Spock (the “monster,” not the doctor; HAL, not the astronaut/star child; and “Sonny,” not Will Smith) if you want science fiction.
What do the readers of this website want? Have the marketeers succeeded beyond Wells’ and Welles’ wildest dreams? On “science fiction” websites across the net, in column after column and in letter after letter, longtime professionals and loyal fans illuminate, discuss and debate SCI-FI. To quote the poet: “They rocked on their hobby horse and called it Pegasus.”
There is one last difference between sci-fi and science fiction all too few may be aware of. From the sale of tens of millions of DVDs, sci-fi can be owned. Selling is the very core of sci-fi. (Buy the “unrated” version of the Sci-Fi Channel’s Species III and freeze-frame the topless babe!) But if you are of that certain mindset, becoming rarer with each passing day, science fiction owns you. From the moment you experienced sf, you bought into it with a piece of your soul and spirit that cannot be marketed at any price. As Klaatu said so eloquently, “The decision is yours.”
Copyright © 2005 by Kevin Ahearn
