Science Fiction Everywhere

I didn't know Frederic Jameson wrote a book about science fiction. Clearly I must read it. Even though I'm not a huge fan of Postmoderninsm, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. It's not because Postmodernism isn't brilliant; it is. It just seems to me (in my admittedly brief and superficial reading of his work) that Jameson really wants to claim that James Joyce is the epitome of all culture and everything after moderism is just a poor imitation. His aesthetics and biases seem very privileged straight white male to me. I could be wrong; this isn't really my subject. I wonder if his opinions on sci-fi are equally biased. But anyway, yay for academics writing about sci-fi.

Speaking of sci-fi, I just finished reading The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld's sequel to Peeps. I need to talk about it because I have a very conflicted reaction to Westerfeld's books in general, and Peeps in particular. I find them both brilliantly provokative and terribly unsatisfying. First, I must congratulate Westerfeld for writing female characters who are important to the plot and demonstrate skills and confidence in their chosen fields of endeavor. Peeps was dominated by the voice of Cal, the geeky male protagonist, and that might have been part of my problem. Also, the concept behind Peeps and The Last Days is excellent; it's about vampires but recasting vampirism as a parasite, so the book talks interestingly about vectors and infection rates. It's a mythology that I'd love to see in queer hands with echos of HIV and lesbian vampires. But while the idea is great, the book itself didn't always keep me engaged. It seemed like it would be great for geeky teenage boys, but not always for me.

The Last Days is set in the same world as Peeps, but it focuses on several teenagers forming a band as the infection comes to a head in New York City. And I also found it frustrating, but for different reasons. It focuses on the members of the band, with the world seemingly coming to crisis behind them, but the potential end of civilization was not quite threatening enough for me. While it's probably brilliantly accurate in describing how purposefully ignorant people can be about the crumbling of an empire or a civilization, I wanted the bigger picture. I wanted to see the loss of infrastructure and feel the world fearing that this really was the last days of the U.S. or technology or the world. I wanted the characters to experience what it would be like if cell phones and power grids and the internet were unreliable. I wanted to feel the power and hope and terror of teenagers facing the crisis by playing weird new music, or just going to clubs and hearing weird new music. Again Westerfeld's concept and world are excellent, but the story itself is not enough for me. I want more. I want a bigger picture.

I've also been watching Masters of Science Fiction on ABC, and I must say, I'm rather enjoying it. These one-hour TV sci-fi mini-movies remind me of The Twilight Zone, which is awesome. So far, I think they're a little too obsessed with being contemporary and politically relevant and risk making the storytelling secondary as a result, but overall I'm very much enjoying them and glad such things are making it to TV.

Plus, I watched the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a friend the other night. I have thoughts on this, but I'm going to hold them until I've seen the 1950s version. I don't hear good things about Invasion, but I am curious.

Thinking about sci-fi across all of these genres and time periods makes me want to talk about theater. But I can't think of a lot of sci-fi theater that I've seen recently. Or at all, really. I remember in high school we did a project that adapted some Twilight Zone scripts for the stage. And I think I saw a stage version of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles also when I was in high school. And in college we did R.U.R. But I can't think of any professional theatrical sci-fi. Unless you count Evil Dead: The Musical. So, theater folks and sci fi geeks out there, do you know of any good sci fi on stage? Or have any theories about why we don't see it as much? Is it because of the fear of being cheesy? Lack of special effects? Some other demand of the genre? Is it really out there and I have just failed to see it? Does it happen places other than LA? What do you think?