Posted on 04/19/2009 4:33:53 PM PDT by KevinDavis
This week in Scifi:
Mon:
8/7 -- CHUCK -- NBC
9/8 -- Heroes -- NBC
Tues:
10/9 -- Fringe -- Fox
Wed:
8/7 -- Lost -- ABC
Fri:
9/8 -- The Dollhouse -- Fox
10/9 -- Primeval -- SciFi Sat:
8/7 -- Kings -- NBC
Actually, I think it's light science fiction, just as many James Bond movies were. The main character has a computer database downloaded into his brain that allows him to "flash" on information about people he sees involved in international espionage and terrorism. There are also other technologies shown that are beyond what's real including the wrist computer "Orion" uses, the remote control car, and so on. I also think that in many ways, it's like Greatest American Hero without the suit.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard rumors it will not be renewed.
The rumors are that it's "endangered" and that CW might pick it up if NBC drops it. It's borderline in the ratings and NBC needs to clear room in their schedule at 10PM every night for Leno.
Watched Kings. I'm getting into it, even if I'm not entirely show what's going on.
Taped/watched Primeval. Prehistoric spiders and caterpillars coming through the rift or whatever it was. When are they going back there?? I'll keep with it a little longer, but with my hearing, picking up the dialogue through the accents isn't easy.
Moonlight: taped it. Started watching it. Fell asleep. I haven't watched this before and don't know anything about it, except, apparently, it has vampires.
This is probably the first weekend in many months that I didn't watch any Stargate. Granted, I can start taping Atlantis. I've never seen any of those yet.
Oh, and I watched another episode of the 1990 Dark Shadows (from Chiller), which is even more interesting now that I've seen the original series (that was back around 2001-2002). Pity it didn't make it. It had a good start and it could've avoided the worst of the original soap.
“Alternate Reality...”
Yeah, but so is basically every story, unless it’s a scrupulously faithful historical retelling. I say if there’s nothing different about the physical universe or the way men control it, then it can’t very well be sci-fi.
Not to say that “Kings” doesn’t include advanced technology or metaphysical hints. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t really rise to the level of sci-fi.
The Man in the High Castle.
The sequel to the Brit version of "Life On Mars" called "Ashes to Ashes" 2nd season started today (April 20th).
“The Man in the High Castle”
Why is that considered sci-fi? Just because it’s written by Phillip K. Dick?
Counter-factual history ought to be considered as a sub-genre of historical fiction, in my opinion. That particular novella goes a long way toward the mystical side, so much so that I lost track of what it was all about at a certain point. But mysticism isn’t unique to sci-fi. Look at Dostoyevsky.
Upon reflection, I suppose one could consider “The Man in the High Castle” sci-fi if the intent was not simply to play “what if,” but to leave the reader with the sense that there are, in fact, two or more different realities existing simultaneously.
I find it difficult to know what the intent was, exactly, because the story doesn’t have what one could call an ending.
I suppose one could question whether anything Philip K. Dick wrote was really sci-fi and if most sci-fi is really sci-fi.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is actually brilliant social commentary under the guise of sci-fi. And who knows what Ubik, Valis, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are supposed to be?
But as an exercise of the imagination I prefer to call it all sci-fi to distinguish it from traditional fantasy.
I think the main point of The Man in the High Castle wasn’t that the people who inhabited that novel were living in an alternate reality but that they were living in a false reality which then loops back to the reader as a question about his own reality. If these people are living in a false reality reading a novel about a reality that is closer to my own, then what does that say about my own reality?
So if Philip K. Dick isn’t science fiction it may be something more useful to the trapped mind.
Kings is probably more properly classified as fantasy but so what?
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is actually brilliant social commentary under the guise of sci-fi.”
“Androids” deals with robots, whose position in the sci-fi world is solid. Tye simplest definition I’ve ever heard for what fits the genre is that sci-fi stories must feature either advances in technology, advances in scientific theory, alternative physical realities, or all of the above. If the stories also provide social or psychological commentary, all the better.
I’ve always thought pure (or “hard”) science-fiction was an excellent avenue for social criticism. Maybe that’s because so much of it is (or used to be) libertarian in outlook (unlike Dick, so far as I know). Even if the genre isn’t specially suited to comment on the times, sci-fi novels are still novels, and the novel as an artform is designed to analyze both the social enviornment around us and the psychological world inside. I say if Dick was adept at social commentary, it was because he was a good novelist period.
“If these people are living in a false reality reading a novel about a reality that is closer to my own, then what does that say about my own reality?”
Sci-fi is particularly adept at launching us into worlds completely unfamiliar in certain respects, yet in others analogous to our own, which both throws the contigent nature of today into relief and shows us what’s enduring about us. Then again, the whole reality vs. simulacrum theme was tackled by Shakespeare, too (”All the world’s a stage...”).
So I sit down to start watching Stargate SG1, which I completely missed out on because I thought the movie was very bad.
I know it had a long run, a successful spinoff, and that many in SF fandom have affection for the show. So I have Season 1 on DVD and started watching it.
I was warned that it’s a comparatively weak season. Still, I enjoy it and am ready to watch the entire run. It will take me the rest of 2009, I am sure, and maybe longer.
So just as season 1 ends, I’m treated to a clip show.
Nothing prepared me for that indignity! Still, I’m hooked! :-)
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