riting sci-fi for television and films is a seasonal business, like playing baseball, or picking cotton. In the heat of early July, while baseball players are looking forward to the All-Star break, and cotton pickers are doing whatever it is cotton pickers do, television writers on staff are locked in air-conditioned cells all over Southern California trying to get six ... well, five ... OK, we'll settle for four scripts completed before their series start filming mid-month.
Television writers not on staff pester their agents with questions like "When are the networks going to be open for pitches?" followed by "What do you mean they don't want to meet with me?"
Feature film writers do what cotton pickers do.
All of them--all of us--go to movies, because summer is the season for sci-fi movies. Shrek. The Mummy Returns. Evolution. Tomb Raider. A.I. Atlantis. All of them are in cineplexes now. (And, even though I'm not supposed to review things here, I will give my scores: A+. B. C-. B-. B+. Incomplete.)
And there's more to come. Cats and Dogs. Final Fantasy. Planet of the Apes. Jurassic Park III. And the trailers for Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.
It may not be a great time to be a sci-fi writer--when has it ever been?--but this sci-fi viewer is having a pretty good time.
Besides, given the pitching process (sci-fi series proposals, I mean, not baseball), in which a concept can truly be understood only if it's a combination of two previously well-known (which is to say, money-making) projects, all of this movie-going is justifiable. I can almost hear myself saying, "Yeah, baby, this series is, like, Shrek meets A.I."
Best of all, expenditures on tickets, parking and popcorn are tax-deductible.
Doing the right thing is difficult
My last column brought me a deluge ... well, a stream ... all right, a
moist towelette of responses, more than all but one of my previous columns, thus affording me the chance to let my readers do half my work this month.
(I promise not to do this too often.)
For those of you who came in late (there are some seats in the back), last month's column, "The Sci in Sci-Fi," found me complaining that the science in science fiction is usually magic with a techy name.
Mike Luoma of Burlington, Vt., complained about my complaints ("Sugar-Coated Column Causes Cavities"), finding the column to be a "pet peeve puff piece, cotton candy, a whole lot o' nuthin' wrapped in sugar coating. Maybe it's just me, but the column read like a quickly dashed off, last minute, written-only-under-obligation rehash of old ideas, with a little personal crankiness mixed in." Mr. Luoma wanted a more detailed and reasoned take on the subject.
As E.T. used to say, "Ouch." The fact is, you could write a whole book on the various silly things that are passed off as "science" in sci-fi television and films, though nobody but me (and possibly Mike Luoma) would read it. So I must plead guilty to having tried to cram coverage of a big subject into a small space.
On the other hand, what I, in my perverse way, was trying to say was that snobbishness on the part of a sci-fi "purist," which is to say, me for most of my life, was not justified, because much or even most printed SF takes the same liberties. The jargon might be better in your average issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine than in this week's episode of Farscape, but the results are still similar.
Robert R. Chase thought I was too easy on Hollywood perpetrators, citing the jarring experience of (for example) noting "a boom mike intruding at the top of the frame" in a production of A Man for All Seasons (a wonderful historical drama, for those of you who came in after 1968). I agree completely, but submit that there is a difference between an outright technical blunder like that as opposed to the sort of conceptual cheating that writers engage in when they're trying to tell a story. Mr. Chase went on to say that he had learned a lot of wonderful things about politics, science and even
sexuality from the best SF (Heinlein, Anderson, Le Guin), and I won't disagree with him on that, either.
J-P Collier ("Today's Magic is Tomorrow's Reality"), self-described "Trekkie and All-Around SCI-FI GEEK," was "quite amazed and disgusted that you of all people"--meaning me--"would debunk science fiction with the complaint that things weren't scientifically genuine enough for you." His point, a lovely one, is that hewing too close to what is known is a sort of death of the imagination. "Please try not to be so narrow-minded to what the future may bring. We probably won't be zipping around and saving the universe in an X-Wing fighter with the likes of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, but we will travel to and most likely colonize other planets in time--imagination is the key--and science brings the dreams to life." Well, I can't argue with Mr. Collier's sentiment here. ... In my clumsy way, that's what I was trying to say: that I used to be a stickler, but with maturity and perspective, have begun to take a more relaxed view of the matter.
That said, Mike Luoma cited "A View from the Gallery," an episode of
Babylon 5 (originally aired in 1998 and written by J. Michael Straczynski
from a story by JMS and Harlan Ellison), in which two maintenance guys watch
a a space battle outside.
As is entirely proper, the explosions are silent as far as they are concerned. "One explains to the other that the explosions are different colors because of the different atmospheres inside the ships. 'Our guys use oxygen, so they look red when they explode.' Then, as they look back, the different colored explosions take on new meaning."
I never saw this, and wish I had, because it is a lovely example of the power of sci-fi television, making you care about people and events in a world that does not exist, without offending against the laws of physics. It gives you a thrill, in fact.
It can be done. It's just so darn hard.
Michael Cassutt's new short story, "Beyond the End of Time," appeared on SCIFI.com's Sci-Fiction site on June 20. His new novel, Red Moon (Forge) is still in bookstores when it should be on your shelves at home. He is currently trying to write good sci-fi scripts for Nickelodeon, Sony and Fox Television.
