Sci-Fi Chic(k)

Is there a badge or possibly t-shirt out there with the text 'Original Nerd' on it? Cause I want one - just to establish my cred in this new world of 'geek is the new black' [on a side note, I'm intrigued by the seeming interchangeability of 'nerd', 'geek', 'dork' - given their original denotative functions - I don't really see that many Babylon 5 fans biting the heads off of chickens for example...]. I remember when John Wyndham's The Chrysalids was standard reading for the grade 10 curriculum (is it still?) - not to mention short stories by Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury - and they weren't taught as 'genre fiction', but in the same breath as 'quality' writing by Margaret Atwood, Sinclair Ross, and Hugh MacLennan. So it seemed natural to me to follow my interests and, being the inquisitive mind I am, I went ahead and read not only Fahrenheit 451 but also Something Wicked This Way Comes and Dandelion Wine; 'The Electric Ant' was followed quite naturally in my world with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and 'Through a Scanner Darkly'. I liked Greek myths, and Ojibway Nanabush stories, and watched The Last Unicorn until I knew every line - and that didn't go away with adolescence or even adulthood. Maybe my preference for playing alone and fairly uncontrolled imagination (which still leaves me often at the mercy of electric light and sound in the wee dark hours after watching, say, The X-Files or Watcher in the Woods...) made me comfortable with looking awry at the world and quite sure that it was looking awry at me in return.

Of course, sci-fi isn't only the new black, it's the new green: we just saw the premiere of the new Bionic Woman - which is hot on the heels of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Heroes. Star Trek and its increasingly nauseating spin-offs have always been there; Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers, Knight Rider, Quantum Leap, The Six-Million Dollar Man, Lost in Space, Stargate, Life on Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, The Hulk, Lois and Clark, Smallville, Roswell, Kyle XY, Jericho, Xena, Hercules, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The X-Files... However critics cut it, dissect it, rip it to pieces for being 'escapist', 'ephemeral', 'popular' - it appeals and it sells and it' s just damn slick and cool while doing so. It is reductive and, indeed, escapist in itself to maintain the critical perspective that genre writing (and I know I'm discussing television pretty much exclusively here) somehow doesn't matter - that it is junk, cultural trash; pointless at best, actually harmful at worst. It's popularity and disposability (though DVD culture has interferred significantly with television as an ephemeral experience) do not impact on its truthiness (I've always wanted to use that word) - to paraphrase Foucault, just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's not true; I would trust a genre that calls attention to its illusion and disjunction more than one which pretends to 'realism' without ever admitting to a fascistic agenda. Which is not to say that sci-fi or fantasy cannot be put to nefarious use - it's still (and perhaps poetry is ahead of it in this sense - though I use ahead cautiously) written by us and we are still nefarious critters - or at least, unknown and unknowable in a way that I sometimes think is glossed over by transparent cinema and writing.

['Nefarious', in passing, is a beautiful word for a negative (?) quality - like malevolent - I always liked Mellificent just on her name alone.]

I'm also currently fascinated by the gender debates in which shows like (at the moment, tho there are older examples) The Bionic Woman and The Sarah Connor Chronicles are participating. Nas pointed out that the 'evolution' of the terminator for example seems to be from the Mr. Universe-buff Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator to the apparently diminutive, slight, but leathally capable Summer Glau in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I still have to read Donna Haraway, I confess, but I'm intrigued by the invigorated femininity of the cyborg in current media - in a world of either machines or magic, strength, to paraphrase Morpheus, has nothing to do with size - do we still think that's air we're breathing?

So this is my badge: this ain't no bandwagon I'm jumping on here - I've got the cherry seat by the window in the back. I am the one you have to pass to use the loo, I know more than you do, and I've been here longer. So entertain me - don't make the mistake of underestimating me.