As I’ve plunged back into the world of sci-fi with my recent glut of Stargate SG-1 watching, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the relevance of science fiction (and to some extent fantasy) as genres of storytelling. It’s interesting how well sci-fi lends itself to considering big, deep themes that would be utterly pretentious and/or preachy in another, more realistic, setting. You can ponder Good versus Evil, and what it means to be Good or Evil, and how people should treat one another, without commenting directly on current events, and without all the button-pushing when you refer to times, places, people, and cultures that exist here and now.
I’ve been thinking that it’s a lot like allegorical fiction, such as Pilgrim’s Progress. (Come to think of it, Bunyan’s work could make for a compelling sci-fi or fantasy quest revisioning…) You ponder familiar topics by viewing them through a different lens. In sci-fi, it’s usually through encounters with time travel and other cultures and races… in fantasy, similar but less exploration-oriented and more epic in nature.
It’s funny to me to think that we tend to consider these genres as nearly exclusively the purview of adolescent boys… and somewhat immature in nature. Certainly, there are pockets of both communities that are fairly immature in nature, but the adaptability of both genres means that you can cover a wide range of things that are common to human experience, and comment on them through means of a detached narrator (perhaps someone transplanted from contemporary America), or through the characters of that time and place themselves… It just seems to me that these types of stories have a sweeping breadth to them that you don’t see in any of the other genres, all of which tend to have a fairly limited set of themes and motivations that they cover over and over again.
The last couple seasons of Stargate dealt a lot with religion, and what can be thought of as a good religion or a bad one. (False gods were defined as such because they tricked followers into supplying them with power or status or what have you under threat of violence for noncompliance.) Interestingly, the “really, really bad guys” of the end of the series had much in common with a traditional Christian perspective about demons–powerful beings on another plane of existence, messing with human beings for their own selfish reasons. I’m sure that the writers of a sci-fi series would be horrified to think that they’d been writing a story about human beings dealing with the “powers and principalities” of angels and demons and their fight for the souls of humans, but in one sense, they were, and that was what gave the conceit such power.
Anyway, it’s gotten me thinking along lines of matters spiritual in nature, and I’m amused that something so seemingly frivolous could stir up a lot of in-depth thought. (Though I am now finished with the series, so perhaps my equilibrium will be restored soon!)
Posted by Kjirstin 
