"Gee, Ted, we should try to cut down on movie piracy. Do you have any ideas?"
"Actually, me and the boys were discussing this over lunch the other way. How about we have public service announcements in theaters to annoy the moviegoers who have already paid $7 for a ticket to see 'Bruce Almighty', and show them the overworked, underpaid carpenters, painters, camera grips, and extras to help them forget the fact that Jim Carrey got paid $25 million to star in this P.O.S. movie?"
"Sounds great, Ted! I love preaching to the choir, how about you?"
Just to clarify, by "ordinary people" I was thinking more along the lines of "characters that the audience can relate to in a meaningful fashion". I think that's why most science fiction has humans in it at least somewhere; barring an extremely good author, it's hard to relate to the culture shock a Venusian Lizard-dactyl would experience when encountering the Sirian methane intelligences for the first time.
The essence of great science fiction, to me anyways, is taking ordinary people as we know them in real life, then placing them in extraordinary (but still believable) situations. Of course, science and technology should be present, but it shouldn't dominate the story. If you let it upstage the rest of the story, you get garbage like Independence Day (which wasn't even very science-fictional, if you ask me).
Great science fiction sheds light on the inner workings of what people are like, by showing them in a different light. It serves as a warning about possible futures, examining implications of technologies both good and bad. And perhaps most of all, great science fiction has ideas and themes in it that can survive the test of time.
Slashdot Mirror
CD-I lol
3DO lol
Xbox huge lol
Phantom what lol
This was in the UK. No guns allowed.
"Gee, Ted, we should try to cut down on movie piracy. Do you have any ideas?"
"Actually, me and the boys were discussing this over lunch the other way. How about we have public service announcements in theaters to annoy the moviegoers who have already paid $7 for a ticket to see 'Bruce Almighty', and show them the overworked, underpaid carpenters, painters, camera grips, and extras to help them forget the fact that Jim Carrey got paid $25 million to star in this P.O.S. movie?"
"Sounds great, Ted! I love preaching to the choir, how about you?"
::bad Scottish accent::
Suck it, Ralsky! Suck it long, and suck it hard!
::/bad Scottish accent::
Cecil
Just to clarify, by "ordinary people" I was thinking more along the lines of "characters that the audience can relate to in a meaningful fashion". I think that's why most science fiction has humans in it at least somewhere; barring an extremely good author, it's hard to relate to the culture shock a Venusian Lizard-dactyl would experience when encountering the Sirian methane intelligences for the first time.
Cecil
The essence of great science fiction, to me anyways, is taking ordinary people as we know them in real life, then placing them in extraordinary (but still believable) situations. Of course, science and technology should be present, but it shouldn't dominate the story. If you let it upstage the rest of the story, you get garbage like Independence Day (which wasn't even very science-fictional, if you ask me).
Great science fiction sheds light on the inner workings of what people are like, by showing them in a different light. It serves as a warning about possible futures, examining implications of technologies both good and bad. And perhaps most of all, great science fiction has ideas and themes in it that can survive the test of time.
Cecil