{"id":4120,"date":"2009-09-30T08:12:18","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T08:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/09\/30\/mysticism-and-sf\/"},"modified":"2009-09-30T08:12:18","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T08:12:18","slug":"mysticism-and-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/09\/30\/mysticism-and-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysticism and SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at SciFi Wire, the house magazine of the Polish syphilis channel, Wil McCarthy has a piece with the eye-catching headline “Is Mysticism Overtaking Science in Sci-Fi?<\/a>“<\/p>\n

\n

What really excites me right now–and not in a good way!–is the recent spate of superficially sci-fi movies that are not merely scientifically illiterate, not merely unscientific or antiscientific in their outlook, but that actually promote mysticism as a superior alternative to science.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Leaving aside the irony of this being sponsored by the Dumb-Ass Horror Movie Channel (not that there’s anything wrong with dumb-ass horror movies…), McCarthy’s got a point. Science fiction has really taken a fall from the good old days, when science was everything. Why, the next thing you know, there’ll be a whole slew of stories promoting daft notions regarding psi powers and kooky made-up religions…<\/p>\n

Oh, wait<\/a>…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, to be fair, McCarthy is making a slightly different argument. He’s not just complaining about unrealistic elements in SF (the old “explosions in space don’t make any noise” thing), but about unscientific or anti-scientific themes. <\/p>\n

But still, this is nothing new. The idea that science (broadly defined) is a source of problems for humanity is an idea with a literary tradition going back to Frankenstein<\/cite> at the very least, if not farther. Michael Crichton built himself a very fine career on writing that sort of story, over and over again.<\/p>\n

It may be true that this sort of thing has not traditionally been part of “science fiction,” by the SF genre has broadened considerably over the last few decades to include a lot of stuff that some would prefer to call fantasy or horror. (Again, the Sci-Fi<\/s> Skiffy<\/s> Skippy<\/s> SyFy channel has done as much as anybody to hurry this process along…)<\/p>\n

In particular, the two examples McCarthy cites, the recent animated movie 9<\/cite> and the forthcoming disaster flick 2012<\/cite>, are not things that I look at and say “Hey, I bet there’ll be some quality science fiction in that!” They’re closer to fantasy and horror, respectively, than any sort of genre from which I expect scientific accuracy or a strong pro-science message.<\/p>\n

So, I’m dubious about McCarthy’s claim. It’s a decent hook for a column, I suppose, but I don’t see it as a profound statement about the current status of science in science fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at SciFi Wire, the house magazine of the Polish syphilis channel, Wil McCarthy has a piece with the eye-catching headline “Is Mysticism Overtaking Science in Sci-Fi?“ What really excites me right now–and not in a good way!–is the recent spate of superficially sci-fi movies that are not merely scientifically illiterate, not merely unscientific or… Continue reading Mysticism and SF<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,35,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}