Science fiction: brilliant, big ideas are not just for geeks
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Version 0 of 1. The fairly recent rise in “geeks” is very interesting. There weren’t really geeks when I was at school. Being a geek wasn’t a thing you were derided or praised for, it just wasn’t a thing. Everyone watched football, everyone watched Red Dwarf. There wasn’t a sense when I was growing up that liking science fiction was weird, uncool or minimal interest. Until I went to college. Then everything became very cliquey and insular and people like myself were suddenly weird. The “trendies” thought I was odd and uncool for being into nerd stuff and the “cool kids” thought I wasn’t cool enough to like all the stuff they all liked. I never thought I was odd or weird or tried to make out that I was, but it was decided I was, and who was I to argue? But not cool weird, like the cool kids, just actual weird. So, y’know, fun times. To be honest, it never really bothered me, I just found it sociologically interesting more than anything. But even so, I was now an outsider and comedians are all partly outsiders. This doesn’t mean your life was necessarily terrible or bleak or that it has to be to make you a comedian, but the practice of viewing the world from the outside helps make you a good comedian, I think. In a situation like this, escapism is incredibly helpful – and where’s further to escape to than Space or The Future? But it’s not just about losing yourself in a fantasy world. Science fiction isn’t just the territory of the lonely or the isolated. It’s for people who like smart, interesting and grown-up ideas executed with style, wit, eloquence and heart. If you like intelligent writing, big ideas and complex characters then science fiction is a great genre. Personally, I do still mainly watch sci-fi for escapism. I find no comfort in familiarity. I don’t mean the familiarity of re-watching things I’ve already seen or listening to the same album again, or consuming content that follows well-worn tropes. I mean that I don’t watch stuff to know what I already know. I want to be told or shown something I don’t know. I don’t even really like observational comedy. Because I know. Tell me something I don’t know. For which sci-fi is perfect. There is a current trend to try to make science fiction more human, to appeal to everyone – which is a great idea, but often soapy human interest nonsense gets in the way of the actual sci-fi. A great science fiction film is one of the great finds in cinema, and even if the whole film itself isn’t 100% amazing there will usually be one big idea or one sequence that is worth watching the film for. Science fiction knows that you don’t have to make a film boring to prove it’s serious and it doesn’t have to be dumb to be fun. Give me Predator, give me Tremors, give me Flight of The Navigator over any of the 3-hour, po-faced, Oscar-bait snoozefests we get now. There are no such snooze-related problems with the films on offer at Science Flicktion, a series of science fiction film screenings in London with bonus science commentary from real scientists. They are all visually stunning, tightly scripted, well acted, brilliantly directed masterpieces of science fiction. Great science fiction movies like these have brilliant, big ideas that capture your imagination and excite you. Even if they’re not completely scientifically accurate or theoretically feasible, they still have a basis in real science. If you delve deeper into the science behind it all, you realise that actual real-life science can be as incredible and exciting and mind-blowing as anything you would see in a high-concept movie. There is a lot of misery in the world at the moment, so why not give yourself an opportunity to embrace joy twice in one evening by seeing a brilliant sci-fi movie AND getting to learn some brilliant science as well? Richard is a comedian and sci-fi fan who hosts the ‘Perfect Movie’ comedy night and has appeared on Peep Show, Miranda and Robin Ince’s London Book Club and Gifted Children shows. Science Flicktion runs 15th-17th May at Chelsea Old Town Hall |