9 ms·

But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream. When I was a teenager I used to be embarrassed to say I read/watched science fiction

But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream. When I was a teenager I used to be embarrassed to say I read/watched science fiction and it felt like any given year you'd be lucky to have more than 1-2 science fiction films, but look at the line up for releases this year: http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies-of-2017/ http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies-of-...

smhost 10y ago
What do you mean by "becoming" more mainstream? To me, it feels like scifi has been mainstream for a good 10~15 years.
- mathewsanders 10y ago
  I Agree. (and I updated my passive wording)
- radley 10y ago
  cough 40. Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, Buck Rogers in 25th Century, ET, Back to the Future... And I'm going to get massively downvoted if I don't mention Dr. Who....
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Hardcore sci-fi fans like to draw a distinction between the fantasy and science fiction genres. They would probably decompose your list like so -- Fantasy: "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers", "Back to the Future"; Science Fiction: "ET", "Close Encounters", "Battlestar Galactica". I've never seen/read "Space: 1999" so I wouldn't know where it belongs.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Hardcore sci-fi fans like to draw a distinction between the fantasy and science fiction genres. They would probably decompose your list like so -- Fantasy: "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers", "Back to the Future"; Science Fiction: "ET", "Close Encounters", "Battlestar Galactica". I've never seen/read "Space: 1999" so I wouldn't know where it belongs.
  - msh 10y ago
    Starwars and close encounteres might have been mainstream for adults, but until a bit more recently it was not considered a normal genre for mainstream audiences.
digitalzombie 10y ago
"Science fiction" films. I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream. But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the current star trek incarnation. I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.
- losvedir 10y ago
  > I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff. I've been watching The Expanse on SyFy lately and it's quite good! I enjoyed it so much I'm now reading the book series it's based on, and really enjoying that as well. They're slightly different, but both good in their own way.
  - jorvi 10y ago
    Once you're done with that try the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy (really hardcore sci-fi, eventually goes into weaponizing the laws of physics etc.), or the "Zones of Thought" trilogy (for something comparable to "The Expanse" in terms of sci-fi level).
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      I read the expanse to book 4 until it took a serious dive in quality, the dialogue and story just went awful and I got tired of the main guy constantly being on the spot, it felt contrived. I really enjoyed the first 3 so was disappointed. Does it get better? Was it a temporary drop?
      - izacus 10y ago
        Luckly it's a temporary drop - book 4 (the one on the colony right?) is by far the worst part of the series and the next pair of books return back to the politicking and Holden being naive and kicked in the head due to it :) Also the story really starts tying up and gets better pacing.
        10y ago
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
Sci-fi has always been mainstream in Hollywood. It's the foundation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career...Terminator, Predator, Running Man, Total Recall. I wont mention the 6th Day and Eraser
goalieca 10y ago
But the science fiction I know and love is not what is mainstream. Consider the new Star Trek movies. They're bad action movies.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  So is GiTS. Hollywood has a real problem with science fiction. It almost always waters it down into a creature-feature, with the usual generic sex and weapon play. Deeper questions about culture, mystery, and identity tend to be removed at the screen writing stage. There are exceptions - Contact and Arrival - but the trend at the moment seems to be towards shallow empty spectacle with a lot of running, jumping, shouting, shooting, and CGI. Add a few wisecracks and skin-tight costumes and you're done. For a different take I'd recommend anything by Tarkovsky. Stalker and Solaris are brilliantly imaginative masterpieces with no modern CGI at all.
  - Tossrock 10y ago
    I agree with most of this post but Solaris is truly painful to watch. A five minute long shot of a freeway is really pushing the line between "slow, subtle artistry" and "banal, cheaply produced filler" (and yes, I'm aware Tarkovsky said it was to get rid of impatient viewers). Also I found the unexplained usage of dwarfs for no reason other than to add "weirdness" questionable.
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    Solaris is one of those rare stories that has been reinterpreted multiple times in very different ways, and they are all interesting. Both films and the book are good, but with different tones and focuses.
  - PerfectDlite 10y ago
    > Stalker and Solaris are brilliantly imaginative masterpieces But definitely not science and hardly fiction (as in fiction books). They're in same category as Twin Peaks or Lost - an unencumbered and hardly explained flights of imagination.
- 10y ago
bane 10y ago
It's such a major and pervasive genre that many people now consume sci-fi media without even realizing and/or knowing it. It's a pity that establishment literary circles still mostly ignore it outside of a few token examples. This drives educational circles and now most literary curricula (even K-12) leave any kind of serious analysis or discussion off the list. Science Fiction requires some very different analysis tools than many other literary genres and as a result, readers (consumers) are so ill prepared that they often can't even recognize it when they're consuming a genre piece, or consuming something with science fiction elements, if it doesn't explicitly involve Star Wars like space opera cliches. But literary criticism, by largely ignoring the genre, is failing to develop those analysis tools. There's plenty of people who'll say "I hate sci-fi" and then go on to binge watch several seasons across several shows that are all members of some sub-genre of sci-fi. Note: IMHO I have a very expansive view of what Science Fiction is. I consider the genre to be basically any story where some non-existent "technology" (or science, or engineering or medicine, etc.) exists, and the story is set in motion around that technology. The technology can be as inconsequential as a grain of sand in the story, or a major plot driver. It can be so important to the story that the entire setting of the story becomes incomparable to anything that we can currently experience, or so mundane that the world of the story is exactly our world, but with this one twist. And I assume technology can be anything from physical stuff to cognitive concepts. As an example of how expansive my view on this is, I would consider a show like NCIS to be sci-fi because many of the plots can only exist or move forward based on some impossible or non-existent forensic or cyber technology. "Walking Dead", sure I consider that sci-fi because it relies on the assumption of some nonexistent disease to drive the entire show. The "James Bond" series (and many spy movies and series) are basically sci-fi because the stories can only function in the presence of non-existing or impossible technology. An amazing number of Horror, Spy, Police, Thriller and Action stories all fall into the same category. If you disagree with me on this, that's fine. But I'll put this another way, "The Man from Earth" is a movie that essentially takes place in one room of a small house. There's no technology, gizmos, spaceships, aliens, or other things that can't exist in this world. It relies on a single premise, an improbably genetic condition, that without which the entire story can't exist. Every other single thing in the story is entirely plausible as a small-set drama and if you conclude that the main character is lying or crazy, then the story is still science fiction because it still causes the viewer to consider an improbable science. In fact, I think the genetic condition is only mentioned once in the entire movie. So if NCIS can get away with 15-20 minutes of impossible forensics and hacking per episode and not be sci-fi, then "The Man from Earth", which dwells on the genetic twist for a few moments can't be either.
josteink 10y ago
> But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream. Only to the extent that any actual science fiction of substance has been watered out to the point that its just gloss, a layer of paint on top of something utterly conventional. There's rarely any mainstream movies which are science fiction at core.
mikeash 10y ago
I love it and hate it. It's nice that it gets attention, but so much of that attention is crap. Looking at your list, there's four generic comic book movies, and almost everything else is a sequel or reboot. I've enjoyed the new Star Wars movies so far and I'll go see the next one, but I can't shake the feeling that they're sucking up the oxygen that might go to something better. Out of the whole list, the only one that really interests me is Valerian.

smhost 10y ago

What do you mean by "becoming" more mainstream? To me, it feels like scifi has been mainstream for a good 10~15 years.

mathewsanders 10y ago
I Agree. (and I updated my passive wording)
radley 10y ago
cough 40. Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, Buck Rogers in 25th Century, ET, Back to the Future... And I'm going to get massively downvoted if I don't mention Dr. Who....
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Hardcore sci-fi fans like to draw a distinction between the fantasy and science fiction genres. They would probably decompose your list like so -- Fantasy: "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers", "Back to the Future"; Science Fiction: "ET", "Close Encounters", "Battlestar Galactica". I've never seen/read "Space: 1999" so I wouldn't know where it belongs.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Hardcore sci-fi fans like to draw a distinction between the fantasy and science fiction genres. They would probably decompose your list like so -- Fantasy: "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers", "Back to the Future"; Science Fiction: "ET", "Close Encounters", "Battlestar Galactica". I've never seen/read "Space: 1999" so I wouldn't know where it belongs.
- msh 10y ago
  Starwars and close encounteres might have been mainstream for adults, but until a bit more recently it was not considered a normal genre for mainstream audiences.

digitalzombie 10y ago

"Science fiction" films. I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream. But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the current star trek incarnation. I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.

losvedir 10y ago
> I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff. I've been watching The Expanse on SyFy lately and it's quite good! I enjoyed it so much I'm now reading the book series it's based on, and really enjoying that as well. They're slightly different, but both good in their own way.
- jorvi 10y ago
  Once you're done with that try the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy (really hardcore sci-fi, eventually goes into weaponizing the laws of physics etc.), or the "Zones of Thought" trilogy (for something comparable to "The Expanse" in terms of sci-fi level).
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    I read the expanse to book 4 until it took a serious dive in quality, the dialogue and story just went awful and I got tired of the main guy constantly being on the spot, it felt contrived. I really enjoyed the first 3 so was disappointed. Does it get better? Was it a temporary drop?
    - izacus 10y ago
      Luckly it's a temporary drop - book 4 (the one on the colony right?) is by far the worst part of the series and the next pair of books return back to the politicking and Holden being naive and kicked in the head due to it :) Also the story really starts tying up and gets better pacing.
      - 10y ago

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

Sci-fi has always been mainstream in Hollywood. It's the foundation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career...Terminator, Predator, Running Man, Total Recall. I wont mention the 6th Day and Eraser

goalieca 10y ago

But the science fiction I know and love is not what is mainstream. Consider the new Star Trek movies. They're bad action movies.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
So is GiTS. Hollywood has a real problem with science fiction. It almost always waters it down into a creature-feature, with the usual generic sex and weapon play. Deeper questions about culture, mystery, and identity tend to be removed at the screen writing stage. There are exceptions - Contact and Arrival - but the trend at the moment seems to be towards shallow empty spectacle with a lot of running, jumping, shouting, shooting, and CGI. Add a few wisecracks and skin-tight costumes and you're done. For a different take I'd recommend anything by Tarkovsky. Stalker and Solaris are brilliantly imaginative masterpieces with no modern CGI at all.
- Tossrock 10y ago
  I agree with most of this post but Solaris is truly painful to watch. A five minute long shot of a freeway is really pushing the line between "slow, subtle artistry" and "banal, cheaply produced filler" (and yes, I'm aware Tarkovsky said it was to get rid of impatient viewers). Also I found the unexplained usage of dwarfs for no reason other than to add "weirdness" questionable.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  Solaris is one of those rare stories that has been reinterpreted multiple times in very different ways, and they are all interesting. Both films and the book are good, but with different tones and focuses.
- PerfectDlite 10y ago
  > Stalker and Solaris are brilliantly imaginative masterpieces But definitely not science and hardly fiction (as in fiction books). They're in same category as Twin Peaks or Lost - an unencumbered and hardly explained flights of imagination.
10y ago

bane 10y ago

It's such a major and pervasive genre that many people now consume sci-fi media without even realizing and/or knowing it. It's a pity that establishment literary circles still mostly ignore it outside of a few token examples. This drives educational circles and now most literary curricula (even K-12) leave any kind of serious analysis or discussion off the list. Science Fiction requires some very different analysis tools than many other literary genres and as a result, readers (consumers) are so ill prepared that they often can't even recognize it when they're consuming a genre piece, or consuming something with science fiction elements, if it doesn't explicitly involve Star Wars like space opera cliches. But literary criticism, by largely ignoring the genre, is failing to develop those analysis tools. There's plenty of people who'll say "I hate sci-fi" and then go on to binge watch several seasons across several shows that are all members of some sub-genre of sci-fi. Note: IMHO I have a very expansive view of what Science Fiction is. I consider the genre to be basically any story where some non-existent "technology" (or science, or engineering or medicine, etc.) exists, and the story is set in motion around that technology. The technology can be as inconsequential as a grain of sand in the story, or a major plot driver. It can be so important to the story that the entire setting of the story becomes incomparable to anything that we can currently experience, or so mundane that the world of the story is exactly our world, but with this one twist. And I assume technology can be anything from physical stuff to cognitive concepts. As an example of how expansive my view on this is, I would consider a show like NCIS to be sci-fi because many of the plots can only exist or move forward based on some impossible or non-existent forensic or cyber technology. "Walking Dead", sure I consider that sci-fi because it relies on the assumption of some nonexistent disease to drive the entire show. The "James Bond" series (and many spy movies and series) are basically sci-fi because the stories can only function in the presence of non-existing or impossible technology. An amazing number of Horror, Spy, Police, Thriller and Action stories all fall into the same category. If you disagree with me on this, that's fine. But I'll put this another way, "The Man from Earth" is a movie that essentially takes place in one room of a small house. There's no technology, gizmos, spaceships, aliens, or other things that can't exist in this world. It relies on a single premise, an improbably genetic condition, that without which the entire story can't exist. Every other single thing in the story is entirely plausible as a small-set drama and if you conclude that the main character is lying or crazy, then the story is still science fiction because it still causes the viewer to consider an improbable science. In fact, I think the genetic condition is only mentioned once in the entire movie. So if NCIS can get away with 15-20 minutes of impossible forensics and hacking per episode and not be sci-fi, then "The Man from Earth", which dwells on the genetic twist for a few moments can't be either.

josteink 10y ago

> But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream. Only to the extent that any actual science fiction of substance has been watered out to the point that its just gloss, a layer of paint on top of something utterly conventional. There's rarely any mainstream movies which are science fiction at core.

mikeash 10y ago

I love it and hate it. It's nice that it gets attention, but so much of that attention is crap. Looking at your list, there's four generic comic book movies, and almost everything else is a sequel or reboot. I've enjoyed the new Star Wars movies so far and I'll go see the next one, but I can't shake the feeling that they're sucking up the oxygen that might go to something better. Out of the whole list, the only one that really interests me is Valerian.