The Geek Beat: A Sci-Fi Renaissance

There are times I feel like I should be shunned from my professional community -- and right now, I feel like I should be cast out for my stubborn ambivalence toward Star Trek. My fellow writers keep asking me if I can sleep at night with such excitement in the air, while my friends have the release date marked on their calendars. But I watch every trailer and film clip hoping I'll get wound up. I wrote about this when the trailer first premiered, and I haven't changed my opinion very drastically, despite the favorable reviews pouring out of Austin and Australia.

One of the reasons why I've been ambivalent toward Trek is because I would have preferred seeing all that time and energy spent on creating original science fiction. Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas were able to do it, after all. Why should we go backwards and retread what they did, when there are thousands of space stories just waiting to be told?

But, we live in a more cautious world of entertainment now and I find myself glad Star Trek is on the horizon, because I think it will help bring in what so many of us want -- a sci-fi renaissance. I think this is the year we're going to get one. If 2008 was the year of the funnybooks, I think 2009 will be the year of the outer limits.

Of course, it's impossible to predict these things, but I think that's the way the zeitgeist is blowing. We live in a weird time -- we just experienced an election which seemed to inspire unprecedented hope, we seem to be enjoying limitless technology, and yet we're crippled by a lot of fear and doubt. The environment is hurting; the economy is failing. For me, I feel like the slightest push will either send us spiraling Beyond Thunderdome, or into the magical future of the Jetsons.

People are flocking to superhero films for a lot of reasons, but part of it is a craving for limitless adventure. By that I don't mean they want "bigger, louder, faster" (although that's part of it), but more that they want stories where you can't find the edges. They want to see a world where Iron Man just keeps flying. If he keeps going, so do we.

At the same time, the anxiety and fear has to be addressed ... but it's best tackled in an alternate world. I think that might just be one reason why Battlestar Galactica did so well. BSG was about death and decay, and yet it was also about the need to fight, hope, and believe. You can't ask for a better theme for these awkward, eerie times.

I think that's why Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, District 9, The Surrogates, and Moon couldn't have picked a better year. They're away from the comic books, riding on a post-BSG wave, and are poised to take full advantage of moviegoers' thirst for alternate worlds and stories. There's a sci-fi story for everyone on that list, with selections that are pure popcorn to stories exploring the nature of humanity. Science fiction has always played in both ends of the pool, and we've seen the finest examples of the genre come from both sides.

The possibilities of a sci-fi renaissance is, well, endless. Oh, to see adaptations of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin, and Connie Willis ... I mean, the amount of original stories out there is staggering, and they've been snubbed for years because sci-fi is too nerdy, too expensive, or too impossible. Now, nothing is impossible and one of the oddest examples of that might just be the Star Trek reboot. Who ever thought we'd see a new Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock?

So, let's boldly go already. And with any hope, we'll keep on going. That final frontier hasn't been claimed yet, not by a mile.