There's a good review of Serenity on Reason.com. (Spoilerific.)
I don't follow many of the references present in that review, but I think I get the idea, and I'll summarize it: Serenity is, in every sense of the word, Sci-Fi. Much of what we call Sci-Fi in the modern genre misses many of the older, classic Sci-Fi meanings. I think Serenity is a well executed reminder that Sci-Fi is more than just "guns in space".
2 comments:
Surely you are joking?
I always called firefly a "space western". All it is, is guns in space. There is very little "sci-fi" to it. I wouldn't even call the "future" setting "sci-fi". What aspects of the show are sci-fi above the others?
Well, no, not really. It's definitely still light, on the Sci-Fi, but it's so much better than most.
I'm going to provide examples in television and film, rather than in book form, just to keep things simple.
Consider Star Wars, Chronicles of Riddick, even Battlestar Galactica, etc, as things normally called Sci-Fi.
Compare that to Minority Report, Star Trek (TOS or TNG, including some of the movies), even Stargate (SG-1, more than Atlantis)
Which category does Serenity fall into? I'd hold that one of the two clear messages present, ("Don't try to make people better involuntarily through technology. It's just wrong." and "Don't meddle in people's lives just because you can.") - the first - is a traditional Sci-Fi theme.
(The latter, of course, is a libertarian ideal that, sadly, is awfully lacking in the US these days - but that's a different topic.)
Sure, Serenity spends a lot of the rest of the time doing other things to do well in the theatre, but there's a core Sci-Fi feel to it.
(Some of the things I was trying to fit into categories, above, don't fit well, such as Farscape. I really liked Farscape, but it wandered a lot.)
Taking a bit of time to apply the <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction' rel="nofollow">Wikipedia definition of science fiction</a>, I'd say "the effect of imagined science" (Miranda and River) surely qualifies.
I didn't say Serenity was great Sci-Fi. I'm not sure great Sci-Fi makes a good movie, at least not very often. Maybe because Hollywood just doesn't get it, honestly. But Serenity, IMO, is firmly in the Sci-Fi camp.
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