Deep Thought: Watch the Science Fiction
Created | Updated Oct 21, 2023
Deep Thought: Watch the Science Fiction
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I've told the story before about the first (and so far, only) time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was the early 70s and the film, which was all the rage, was shown on the big screen in the university auditorium by the film club. The presentation was enhanced by the comfortable seats there and the generally smoky atmosphere redolent of controlled substances. The light show part of it was fairly impressive – after all, it was the 70s and no CGI had sullied our vision yet.
Afterwards, my friends and I were discussing the film over strawberry pie at the Shoney's down the street. One guy, a mathematics major and scifi fan, had some interesting observations to make about spacetime, evolution, and the possible significance of using the theme from Also Sprach Zarathustra. Personally, I
had found the whole thing rather pretentious – and I'm neither a Strauss fan nor a Nietzsche appreciator, but I thought the film was okay.
A guy we'd never met before, I don't remember what he studied, who was just with the group because he'd started dating one of the women, was silent through all this. Finally, he blurted out the burning question that was on his mind.
'What I don't get is, what were the monkeys doing on the moon?'
That was half a century ago, friends, and the scene is still stuck in my mind. In a way that nothing Kubrick ever filmed could be.
This will go a long way toward explaining why it was only a few nights ago that Elektra and I finally broke down and watched 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the 1984 sequel in which – thanks to the fact that this filmmaker actually deigns to explain things – the whole monolith business becomes much clearer.
We also get to see John Lithgow be convincingly terrified of outer space and listen to Helen Mirren intone numerous countdowns in perfect Russian. She really knows her numbers. Yes, I know Ms Mironova is fluent. She also comes across as a really mean Soviet.
Yes, Soviet. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance involved in watching a film with '2010' in the title, made in 1984, in 2023. The first thing you have to remember is that for the filmmakers, the Cold War is still going on – and as far as they're concerned, it will still be going on in 2010. Also, all the technology you've experienced since 1984? Forget about it. They don't know any of that, either. So settle down and watch while 1984 makes contact with aliens, reboots HAL, the passive-aggressive AI, and tries to avoid World War Three.
About HAL: I found him irritating enough in 2001. Here, he is absolutely insufferable as Bob Balaban – for some reason named 'Dr Chandra' – coaxes him along and tries not to hurt his feelings lest he go all needlessly-messianic on them all. This is futile, of course: HAL figures out where all this is headed. Then he gets really messianic. I did not have 'AI redemption motif' on my 2001 bingo card.
Overall, we enjoyed 2010. It was an interesting blast-from-the-past. Which brings me to my topic, finally: science fiction is never about science (which is just a process by which we learn things). Equally, science fiction is almost never about the future. (Exception: Philip K Dick, the 20th-century Delphic Oracle.) Science fiction is a way writers and filmmakers have of running thought experiments about the present without alerting the authorities.
By authorities, I mean all those armchair experts on the 'current situation' who are eager to dumbsplain to us why our problems are insoluble. You know: government advisors, talky journalists, academic foreign-watchers, heads of philosophy departments, preachers of all religions, and professional 'skeptics' who strain at gnats and swallow camels. Those people just get in the way if you try to analyse the situation. Throw in a few ray guns and they shut up. Rod Serling knew this.
The thing about science fiction stories is that, to move them into 'the future', you simply project your own present to a fictional date and throw in some fancy but imaginary technology, like transporters or faster-than-light drive, or whatever. Maybe, like 2010, you tart up the décor with what you fondly imagine home furnishing will look like in the future (like a bed with an aquarium for a headboard). You have fun inventing awful fashions. If you've just been through the 70s, your imagination is likely to run wild here.
But no matter how flashy the wardrobes get – why does everybody's future seem to favour tinfoil clothing? – the people inside the weird clothes remain the same as. . . whenever you're writing this. You can spot science fiction from the 1950s because the men are conformists and the women are clingy homebodies. 1930s science fiction will threaten the future with power-hungry vamps and out-of-control machinery. Look back at the political situation the writers found themselves in and you will see why. I swear one of the reasons people still like Jules Verne is that imagining people doing space-age things while dressed in Victorian clothing is so amusing.
The film 2010 came out in 1984, which means that the script was written in 1983. Screenwriter/director/producer Peter Hyams was in contact with author Arthur C Clarke by email. Hyams was in Los Angeles, Clarke was in Sri Lanka, and they had cutting-edge Kaypro II computers and direct-dial modems, fancy that. Clarke wrote the novel in 1982.
What that means, aside from the technology, is that the writers involved were living in the middle of possibly the most dangerous time of modern history1: the time when US/Soviet 'brinksmanship' almost started a nuclear war. In autumn 1983, a NATO military exercise was almost mistaken for the real thing. A false alarm in a Soviet system nearly caused retaliation. Go look up 'Able Archer' and thank Stanislav Petrov, who is possibly the reason we're around today to argue about things.
If you know all this, 2010 seems a lot less like a borderline-cheesy scifi movie with an 'aww, isn't that sweet?' ending, and more like an international cri de coeur, so appreciate.
Is it still possible to use science fiction, fantasy, and other offbeat genres to discuss serious issues? Or have the commercial interests finally turned them all into box office cash cows for general entertainment and the appreciation of ever-more-elaborate stunts for Awix to critique in detail? Is the alternative-universe thought experiment finally dead?
The night after we watched 2010, we saw Renfield. It was billed as an 'action comedy horror' movie. Uh-huh. It was a box office flop. Uh-huh. I guessed that as soon as it turned up on my streaming screen. Barbie still costs serious money, but I can see this for free? Elektra, no fan of gore, was skeptical.
People, the movie is about ordinary people and their empowerment. How they realise their own role in enabling the excesses of tyrants and greedy corporations. How it dawns on them that this is their universe, too, and they have a right to live in it. How they use the humble tools at their disposal to fight off the worst excesses of evil and gain a new start, however tentative.
And yes, it does this while being ridiculously gory. The dialogue is beyond silly, as if Damon Runyan had remade The Godfather. Nicolas Cage is busy being Nicolas Cage, which in this case is Dracula with far too many teeth.
But I claim that the film works. It's coherent. It's well-acted: even the Nic Cage scenery-chewing has panache. And they get there with their premise. If you read all this in a novel – well, first, it would be on the remainder pile at Books-a-Million. It would have a misleading cover and dodgy blurb. But inside would be a tale somewhere on the far side of Vonnegut: absurdist, heart-breaking, but with heart.
Each generation has to write its own scifi/fantasy – at least, the kind that matters. The space operas will always be there, a dime a dozen, going nowhere. Actors with gleaming teeth will smile at cameras. But out on the fringes, the remainder piles and streaming catalogues, we'll always find those little gems of thought experiments that tickle our fancies and suggest things that maybe, just maybe, will someday become real ideas in our real worlds. That's if we don't blow up the planet first.
