Sci-Fi/Fantasy

I have a confession to make. I am a total sci-fi fan.

Most of you probably already knew this. Or maybe you didn't. I did, I just never fully realized this until we watched Star Trek and Firefly in my television class. And I saw Thor with my parents (Oh. My. God. That movie was fantastic. Considering that Thor is the Avenger I know the least about, I was totally pleased and ecstatic about it).

http://www.comingsoon.net/

I think part of my lack of realization about this interest is that I was never really good at paying attention to genre. Did I care if there were spaceships and aliens intermingling with an interesting plot line? No, but it was certainly a nice perk. It has recently occurred to me that not everyone grew up watching Star Trek with their father and discussing how it capitulates the deeper philosophies of life. Not all kids read Tuck Everlasting 20 times in elementary school (this book is sci-fi/fantasy. A family that can live forever? Of course it is!) And a lot of people probably didn't read The Hobbit at age 10 and think it was fantastic but not actually understand what was going on until much later. Yes, I know that book is written more for children. Yes, I know that it shouldn't be that hard to understand. But I was terribly distracted by trying to fathom what a hobbit was because I'd never heard of them before. I was also ten and just because I had a good vocabulary didn't mean I was good at understanding plots (much to my dismay, my friend [X] read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ridiculously young and knows a ridiculous amount about anything Tolkein. I don't know how she know is all... probably because she read The Silmarillion ages ago and I'm just now getting to it. Regardless, it's a little hard to talk about it with her because it ends up sort of insulting to intelligence. Just because I've been a bit slow on the uptake).

http://www.startrek.com/

I admit that I'm not familiar with sci-fi/fantasy that isn't pretty mainstream. I haven't read Dune, I haven't read Mercedes Lackey (like my "real" fantasy literature-reading friends). I also fail to clearly articulate the differences between science fiction and graphic novels, as expressed by my inclusion of Thor in this discussion. But it came to my attention during discussions of sci-fi shows in my television class that some people don't even like the mainstream stuff. Aliens weird some people out. Hurtling through space and time makes them uncomfortable. Discussion of faeries interwoven into modern day city-life gets looks of confusion. For some reason, I know way too much about pookas. And then I begin to realize that I did not learn this stuff in school, I didn't even learn it on TV. I learned it from reading a very particular sub-genre of books. One not everyone encounters.

My initial reaction was this:

(Oh, no; I just had this great and terrible vision of the rest of my life being comprised of nothing but lines of dialogue from Sherlock.)

But then it struck me why so many people might shy away from sci-fi/fantasy. To be honest, sometimes I do as well. And that's because of the Sy Fy channel and B movies. They have a lot of badly made, awkward sci-fi. If all you know about science fiction was that, you'd shy away from it too. Fortunately for me, I never saw Sy Fy channel until I was a teenager, so I was saved the trauma of having that as my first experiences with the genre.

I can understand why sci-fi may not be everyone's cup of tea; it takes some suspension of belief and an acceptance that weird shit may and can happen. After reading Phillip K. Dick, I accept that I like this. That fact that I was enjoying Radio Free Albemuth and not totally confused out of my mind I think shows that I've just developed a different taste for things that other people may not necessarily have. On that note, I'm going to go geek out about the new Star Trek movie and enjoy reading people's bets on who the villain will be.