Brad Ideas - On high quality Science Fiction - Comments

Analysis, Opinion, Politics

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:59:10 -0800

An opinion is an incomplete view. When that's modified by a (personal) agenda it's politics.

English Class Needed

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:09:31 -0800

Someone needs an English lesson. That is called an opinion, not politics.

So you mean that if the show

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:45:27 -0800

So you mean that if the show ended up with RTF as the origins of the humans, then it's literal statement saying "we are descendants of the RTF interbreeding with cylons and cavemen"?
It is an allegory, it isn't meant as a literal statement...

Are you serious?

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:24:47 -0800

With all due respect to its fans, I've been watching the train wreck that is BSG slowly unfold over the years and, quite frankly, this is NOT hard SF. It's barely SF at all. And it is simply bad storytelling.

Stylish, yes. Well-acted, yes. But style has definitely trumped substance in a show whose writers clearly had no idea where they were going with their increasingly convoluted and meandering plotline that no last-minute infodump is going to salvage.

There isn't enough science in the fiction to fill a teacup, and it adheres to almost every tired cliche of the genre. Hardcore SF fans might forgive these sort of shortcomings in a run-of-the-mill space opera if it provided a healthy enough helping of spaceships and robots and spandex-clad heroines in peril, but this show does not.

What it offers instead is Peyton Place in Space. The epic story arc that seems to keep the fanboys in thrall is as incomprehensible as Baltar's survival and the raw sexual magnetism he seems to exert over every Cylon hottie in the galaxy. Seriously...it's weird enough that alien women keep trying to diddle us Earthmen...why would a bunch of mass-produced machines want to turn the Galactica into the truck stop at the end of the universe? Earth's rag-tag fugitive fleet and last hope for survival is being pursued to the end of the universe by a bunch of horny space baptists who want to have our babies? Really?

If there were any real logic to the show, Baltar would be dead or permanently consigned to the spaceship with the rubber walls, Cylons would probably come in more flavors than Baskin Robbins, no one would be suffering from live-or-memorex moral dilemmas while fighting for the survival of their species and just about every officer currently serving on the Galactica would be one psych evaluation away from a court martial.

The first Galactica was more fun. It was just as stupid...moreso, even...but at least it had plenty of robots and spaceships and things blowing up. In technicolor.

Babylon 5 - Season 5

Rosie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:32:13 -0800

I disagree with the person who claimed that BABYLON 5 ran out of steam in Season 5. What B5's Season Five did was take the story beyond the end of the Shadow and the Earth Civil Wars . . . which is what the fans did not want to see. They wanted to see the series end on a happy note with victory for the heroes, as it did by the end of Season 4. They did not want to see the results and consequences of those victories. Someone once claimed that in war stories, people want the stories to end with victory for the good guys . . . and not the consequences of that victory.

BABYLON 5 used Season 5 to set up the long years of consequences that Sheridan, Delenn and other familiar characters would have to face in the aftermath of the wars featured in the series. Season 5 had a powerful storyline . . . but it was depressing to watch. And the fans hated that. Which is why many of them claim that this final season was weak.

Seat Filler

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:44:36 -0800

"Gritty." "Edgy". "Cool". "Attitude".

That's not adult. That's generic seat filler for kids.

We come in HD. Shoot 'n' fill. Shoot 'n' fill.

The BSG rules of order

mrd — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:37:18 -0800

Science matters. Plot matters more. Characters matter even more. Fracking cool shit trumps all.

B5 Story Arc

mrd — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:32:55 -0800

For the most part B5 worked. I have criticisms (a bit clunky in S1, where the arc was less apparant and the lead less than compelling, a bit dull in S5, inconsistent cast, writing that leaned more towards dualing monologues than dialogue), but when it clicked, boy did it click.

The problems you note in S5 were due to the series' "cancellation" in S4. The wrap up to the war was supposed to be in the beginning of S5, but JMS pushed it up to resolve the major arcs before the end of S4 and, he thought, the series. When they were surprisingly picked up by TNT, he had nothing for the start of S5, so he sort of stretched the remaining stories out over the early part of the season.

Don't get me started on Trek.

Alvin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:35:00 -0800

We're on a BSG blog, and I could go for hours. Suffice to say I don't think I've heard them say that it's supposed to be 'grittier.' Anything but. A little more serious than the previous few series, perhaps. I think they're going for the Heroes/Lost crowd. Not trying to make Trek into those shows, but re-inventing it in a slightly different way to show those folks 'hey, Trek is just as cool as those shows, it just needs to be brought up to date.' Basically, it's what TOS or TNG would have been if they'd been made today, with a 21st century style and sensibility-- and better FX.

Possibly

Lisa — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:27:13 -0800

Possibly, but this "re-imagined" Star Trek is supposed to be grittier than previous Star Trek. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Two Guns A'Blazing

Lisa — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:26:10 -0800

And the two guns thing? I can deal with that because it just looks too frakking cool.

It was established Starbuck

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:17:10 -0800

It was established Starbuck is both a pilot and expert shot with a gun. Also, in Scar, it was established proficiency with a firearm would have been standard training because it lead to another fundamental of pilot training.

Don't be fooled by Uhura

Alvin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:01:33 -0800

Her getting undressed is probably more innocent than it seems. My guess is she's simply changing after going off-duty, and finds Kirk hiding under her bed after cavorting with the Orion woman (which is nothing we haven't seen on TOS). Then she chases him through the corridors. But of course, they cut the trailer to make it seem more sexy and exciting.

Asimov, Clarke, Asaro etc.

Lisa — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:34:27 -0800

As a teenager I actually loved Asimov and Clarke, but I always felt like there was some dimension missing --and it was a character component. Their novels were intellectually interesting, but not visceral at all. I wanted my SF to be based as much as possible on real science, but I didn't necessarily need to see the equations or the technobabble. For me, a compromise is Catherine Asaro, who could show you the equations that make her FTL drives "possible" (given some assumptions), but that doesn't show up in Catch the Lightning. The story is character-driven even though she understands all the underlying science. A few science fiction writers have science backgrounds (Asaro used to work for NASA), but many don't and I don't think it's absolutely necessary -- but an appreciation of the importance of science is imperative.

The good thing about Star Trek is we can watch it with our kids and most of us watched it ourselves as kids. As an adult I think it's a bit too antiseptic (DS9 less so), but it's one of the places that encourage young adult interest in science and science fiction. While certainly not up to the same scientific standard, TOS of BSG falls into this category too. In other words, I probably wouldn't be into BSG right now if I hadn't watched Star Trek and TOS BSG (and Star Wars, for what it's worth) with my parents when I was a kid. While I love the grittiness and the mature content of the re-imagined BSG, there really isn't anything on TV right now to get kids and young people interested in science and science fiction. Even the new Star Trek movie is geared for adults -- with Uhura shimmying out of her clothes it's not exactly something you can your ten year old to see. What's the alternative? Transformers? Hancock? Maybe Star Trek should have been more serious about a series or movie about Starfleet targeted at young adults. We need both kinds of science fiction to satisfy adults who want grittier content and to pull in a younger audience so they can continue to be fans as adults.

Somewhat related, I really wish the Discovery Channel or NatGeo would get the rights to air Sagan's Cosmos series. I'm kind of tired of Shark Week. Morphed on NatGeo is kind of cool though.

Can't resist...

zach — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:09:41 -0800

I don't remember Sisko having a sexual relationship with Eddie Olmos.
But it sure would have made DS9 much more interesting. :)

On high quality Science Fiction

brad — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:03:57 -0800

(This post from my Battlestar Galactica Analysis Blog is cross-posted to my main blog too.)

There’s been some debate in the comments here about whether I and those like me are being far too picky about technical and plot elements in Battlestar Galactica. It got meaty enough that I wanted to summarize some thoughts about the nature of quality SF, and the reasons why it is important. BSG is quality SF, and it set out to be, so I hold it to a higher bar. When I criticise it for where it sometimes drops the ball, this is not the criticism of disdain, but of respect.

I wrote earlier about the nature of hard SF. It is traditionally hard to define, and people never fully agree about what it is, and what SF is in general. I don’t expect this essay to resolve that.

Broadly, SF is to me fiction which tries to explore the consequences of science, technology and the future. All fiction asks “what if?” but in SF, the “what if?” is often about the setting, and in particular the technology of the setting, and not simply about the characters. Hard SF makes a dedication to not break the laws of physics and other important principles of science while doing so. Fantasy, on the other hand, is free to set up any rules it likes, though all but the worst fantasy feels obligated to stick to those rules and remain consistent.

Hard SF, however, has another association in people’s minds. Many feel that hard SF has to focus on the science and technology. It is a common criticism of hard SF that it spends so much time on the setting that the characters and story suffer. In some cases they suffer completely; stories in Analog Science Fiction are notorious for this, and give hard SF a bad name.

Perhaps because of that name, Ron Moore declared that he would make BSG be Naturalistic Science Fiction. he declared that he wanted to follow the rules of science, as hard SF does, but as you would expect in a TV show, character and story were still of paramount importance. His credo also described many of the tropes of TV SF he would avoid, including time travel and aliens, and stock stereotyped characters.

I am all for this. While hard SF that puts its focus on the technology makes great sense in a Greg Egan novel, it doesn’t make sense in a drama. TV and movies don’t have the time to do it well, nor the audience that seeks this.

However, staying within the laws of physics has a lot of merit. I believe that it can be very good for a story if the writer is constrained, and can’t simply make up anything they desire. Mystery writers don’t feel limited that they can’t have their characters able to fly or read minds. In fact, it would ruin most of their mystery plots of they could. Staying within the rules — rules you didn’t set up — can be harder to do, but this often is good, not bad. This is particularly true for the laws of science, because they are real and logical. So often, writers who want to break the rules end up breaking the rules of logic. Their stories don’t make any sense, regardless of questions of science. When big enough, we call these logical flaws plot holes. Sticking to reality actually helps reduce them. It also keeps the audience happy. Only a small fraction of the audience may understand enough science to know that something is bogus, but you never know how many there are, and they are often the smarter and more influential members of the audience.

I lament at the poor quality of the realism in TV SF. Most shows do an absolutely dreadful job. I lament this because they are not doing that bad job deliberately. They are just careless. For fees that would be a pittance to any Hollywood budget, they could make good use of a science and SF advisor. (I recommend both. The SF advisor will know more about drama and fiction, and also will know what’s already been done, or done to death in other SF.) Good use doesn’t mean always doing what they say. While I do think it is good to be constrained, I recognize the right of creators to decide they do want to break the rules. I just want them to be aware that they are breaking the rules. I want them to have decided “I need to do this to tell the story I am telling” and not because they don’t care or don’t think the audience will care.

There does not have to be much of a trade-off between doing a good, realistic, consistent story and having good drama and characters. This is obviously true. Most non-genre fiction happily stays within the laws of reality. (Well, not action movies, but that’s another story.)

Why it’s important

My demand for realism is partly so I get a better, more consistent story without nagging errors distracting me from it. But there is a bigger concern.

TV and movie SF are important. They are the type of SF that most of the world will see. They are what will educate the public about many of the most important issues in science and technology, and these are some of the most important issues of the day. More people will watch even the cable-channel-rated Battlestar Galactica than read the most important novels in the field.

Because BSG is good, it will become a reference point for people’s debates about things like AI and robots, religion and spirituality in AIs and many other questions. This happens in two ways. First, popular SF allows you to explain a concept to an audience quickly. If I want to talk about a virtual reality where everybody is in a tank while they live in a synthetic world, I can mention The Matrix and the audience immediately has some sense of what I am talking about. Because of the flaws in The Matrix I may need to explain the differences between that and what I want to describe, but it’s still easier.

Secondly, people will have developed attitudes about what things mean from the movies. HAL-9000 from 2001 formed a lot of public opinion on AIs. Few get into a debate about robots without bringing up Asimov, or at worst case, Star Wars.

If the popular stories get it wrong, then the public starts with a wrong impression. Because so much TV SF is utter crap, a lot of the public has really crappy ideas about various issues in science and technology. The more we can correct this, the better. So much TV SF comes from people who don’t really even care that they are doing SF. They do it because they can have fancy special effects, or know it will reach a certain number of fans. They have no excuse, though, for not trying to make it better.

BSG excited me because it set a high bar, and promised realism. And in a lot of ways it has delivered. Because it has FTL drives, it would not meet the hard SF fan’s standard, but I understand how you are not going to do an interstellar chase show with sublight travel that would hold a TV audience. And I also know that Moore, the producer knows this and made a conscious decision to break the rules. There are several other places where he did this.

This was good because the original show, which I watched as an 18 year old, was dreadful. It had no concept of the geometry of space. TV shows and movies are notoriously terrible at this, but this was in the lower part of the spectrum. They just arrived at the planet of the week when the writers wanted them to. And it had this nonsense idea that the Earth could be a colony of ancient aliens. That pernicious idea, the “Ark” theory, is solidly debunked thanks to the fact that creationists keep bringing it up, but it does no good for SF to do anything to encourage it. BSG seemed to be ready to fix all these things. Yet since there are hints that the Ark question may not be addressed, I am disappointed on that count.

To some extent, the criticism that some readers have made — that too much attention to detail and demand for perfection — can ruin the story for you. You do have to employ some suspension of disbelief to enjoy most SF. Even rule-follow hard SF usually invents something new and magical that has yet to be invented. It might be possible, but the writer has no actual clue as to how. You just accept it and enjoy the story. Perhaps I do myself a disservice by getting bothered by minor nits. There are others who have it worse than I do, at least. But I’m not a professional TV science advisor. Perhaps I could be one, but for now, if I can see it, I think it means that they could have seen it. And I always enjoy a show more, when it’s clearly obvious how much they care about the details. And so does everybody else, even when they don’t know it. Attention to details creates a sense of depth which enhances a work even if you never explore the depth. You know it’s there. You feel it, and the work becomes stronger and more relevant.

Now some of the criticisms I am making here are not about science or niggling technical details. Some of the recent trends, I think, are errors of story and character. Of course, you’re never going to be in complete agreement with a writer about where a story or character should go. But if characters become inconsistent, it hurts the story as much or more as when the setting becomes inconsistent.

But still, after all this, let’s see far more shows like Battlestar Galactica 2003, and fewer like Battletar Galactica 1978, and I’ll still be happy.