Captain Kamen slowed the skimmer down to the
point where the planet’s surface was no longer a blur and switched the controls
to manual. His pressure suit
partially deflated; the control yoke swung over his shoulders and into his
hand. He turned his craft towards
the coordinates the Kasstelleeian had given him before he died. He barrelled on, safe in the thought
that his Galactic-issue mark IV magpistol was strapped to his right thigh,
three spare clips on his left.
‘Fisheggs,’ Captain Kamen swore softly to
himself as he stared into the mouth of the cave system that lay at the
coordinates. The Galetti lay
moored within, out of sight of the satellites that swept the sky overhead searching for her.
But that wasn’t what surprised the
ageing spacetrooper. ‘That
spaceship… miaowed.’
I have a confession.
I find much sci-fi,
possibly most sci-fi, slightly embarrassing.
This isn’t much of a
confession, unless you’re trying to write sci-fi and get it published. Which I am.
I’ve been meaning to
write this confession for a while, but have struggled putting it into words,
giving it definite form. Because
I’ve struggled with exactly what it is that I find embarrassing. I’ve tried to write a bit of breast-beating
space opera to illustrate what makes me squirm, although it’s nowhere near as bad
as I wanted to make it. I think I
must have some kind of quality threshold which I can’t push myself below.
I think at a very
surface level it’s authors’ obvious enjoyment of making up names - of
spaceships, planets, races, weaponry - over and above deepening character and
focussing on story. George Lucas,
for both JarJar Binks and the elements you revealingly focussed on in scrubbing
up the earlier films - no, Mos Eisley was never crying out for flurries of
little furry creatures, I’m very much thinking of you.
At a more
sophisticated level, given sci-fi’s reputation for being a 'genre of ideas', it’s
when there is a surfeit of ideas.
Just boy meets girl or black hats versus white hats in space.
‘In space’. Hold that thought. Because any pitch with ‘in space’
afterwards become sci-fi, in a way that doesn’t apply to any other genre. Northanger Abbey, the story of Christ,
the wide-mouthed frog joke. Add
‘in space’ afterwards and they all become sci-fi. But not real sci-fi.
Just stories wearing sci-fi’s clothes. In short, there’s too much of it around.
This line of thought
has been prompted by Tomorrow’s Worlds, Dominic Sandbrooke’s TV history (? personal
walk-though?) of sci-fi. It’s reasonably engaging stuff, but all a bit random, because it’s such a wide genre that it
doesn’t really have much of a history that can be grabbed hold of easily. Sure, there’s a few milestones -
Melieres, Verne, Lt Uhuru - but for the main part it’s a ragbag of Dom’s
favourites.
One of the more thought-provoking parts was when Sandbrooke contrasted
and compared HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ with the US film versions, with the
book set in the Surrey stockbroker belt, the stateside versions in the big
city. He quite rightly contrasts
the quiet of Surrey’s rolling landscape with the coming of the Martians in a
way that doesn’t quite apply to the American versions as the story arc begins
to tend towards ‘more is more’.
And it’s this contrast
between the everyday, the prosaic, and the alien that makes sci-fi
disconcerting. And disconcerting, I've decided, is what I look for in thought-provoking, adult, idea-driven sci-fi. And - I think this is where I find
sci-fi squirmy - there’s a direct correlation between lack of disconcerting-ness
and feelings of silliness. There’s
a disconcerting-shaped hole left behind.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s a British or Commonwealth
thing. Maybe it’s a
non-Californian thing. Or maybe
it’s something that everybody except Michael Bay shares. But I’d much prefer a story in which
nothing happens except everybody who was left-handed became right-handed and
vica versa than the planet blows up.
Captain Kamen, out.
