Are you a scifi snob?

Social media has really changed how we do things. It’s how we share news, information, opinions, mostly opinions. Imagine my surprise this week when I stumbled onto a Twitter exchange between two movie industry players in scifi, in which one stated unequivocally that “Star Wars is not scifi”.

Wait, What?

Yeah, one of those, I guess. Look, Star Wars to Star Trek, the science parts of almost any series in this genre is still fiction. Warp engines are a theory. Harnessing wormholes is an insane dream. That’s not what scifi is actually about in the end.

It’s about imagining everything that’s possible and a few things that aren’t. Ultimately, scifi isn’t about the tech. It’s about the creators of that tech, the world the tech builds. It’s about people.

I do not pick one franchise over another. I am a scifi aficionado, a devotee in fact, to quote Whedon. (ten points if you can name that reference) From Farscape to Trek to SG1, I love the stories. All of scifi, taken as a whole, is a study of people and the story of the human condition. It’s got zero to do with wormholes, sorry Crichton.

So, when I hear the fans bickering over what’s “real” scifi, I think seriously? Science Fiction isn’t an in depth study of string theory or a treatise on transporter technology. It’s a good story.