How can you love sci-fi and not love all the paraphernalia that goes with it. Nobody ‘quite likes’ Star Wars (with the notable exception of my husband, although I think he only says that to appease me!) and if you grew up on a diet of Star Trek, you will no doubt have followed The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager; you probably even ploughed through Enterprise because by then it had become a matter of pride.
Science fiction is not merely a genre, it’s a commitment. I used to think it was a phase, but as I have grown older I realise that it is my filthy secret, hidden inside the closet, along with my Barbarella costume and Star Trek communicator. It is an addiction that I cannot break.
Then there are the sub cultures. As a child of the 70s growing up in the South West of England, my influences were Blakes 7, The Hitch-hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy and Doctor Who, a far cry from the sophisticated production and state of the art effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Close Encounters of The Third Kind. I’m still a dirty sci-fi kind of a girl, which is why I love Firefly above all the others – that wonderful escapism so deeply entrenched in reality. Give me a couple of horses and a ray gun over 3D virtual space walking any day.
So how did sci-fi become so rooted within my soul? Well, my parents were the generation that followed the space race, watched the moon landings live and imagined a future where, by the turn of the century, we would all be vacationing on Mars. They had that desperate need to believe, in the same way I leave out mince pies and sherry for Santa on Christmas Eve, long before my teenage children have gone to bed. They introduced me to the next best thing to actual space travel: they read me Carl Sagan as a bedtime story. It runs through my family’s DNA, it is part of our makeup.
Of course, that then leads to the level of commitment to which you aspire, the ‘nerdometer’ against which we measure ourselves. It is at these points of self-appraisal that I regress immediately to the primary school in order to assert my more highly tuned nerdiness, my deeper understanding and greater knowledge of all things nerd, over the pretenders around me.
How many times have you heard “I’ve watched Star Wars over 100 times,” as if that statement is some kind of badge of honour, membership of a club, extra merits for stamina, but few will admit that they did it purely to perfect their Chewbacca call or Hans Solo gait (although it has to be said, a sizeable proportion of time has been spent by half the audience studying Hans Solo in the utmost detail!
The real nerds embrace the commitment, the attention to detail. I cannot count how many months of my life have I devoted to creating the perfect fancy dress costume (and let me tell you, you do not attend a party dressed as a Borg if you intend to eat, drink, dance, sit or pee at any point during the event). Come on, who hasn’t got the T shirt with the obscure line from the film that only true fans would appreciate – why? To give that little nod, that knowing smile – ‘we know, we share something the rest of the world cannot understand’.
My children too have learned to live with science fiction, from being sent to school on mufti day as a very cute six year old Malcolm Reynolds, to attending Comic Con as Scarlet Witch. They knew there was no point in fighting it and so it is with a sense of pride that I dust the action figures and tidy away the Alien box set, knowing that I have done my job as a parent.
So yes, I am a sci-fi nerd and always will be. The costumes, the conventions, the DVD director’s commentaries, the fan clubs, the social media are so much part of the books, the films and the TV shows in which we can immerse ourselves. The more there is, the more we crave, which is perhaps why some of us go in to create our own, to be a part of it, to join in the party at a fundamental level. Why? It is because of a collective belief in humanity, in imagination, in possibility.
That is why I am a nerd. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
Isaac Asimov - "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." ("My Own View," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)
Science fiction is not merely a genre, it’s a commitment. I used to think it was a phase, but as I have grown older I realise that it is my filthy secret, hidden inside the closet, along with my Barbarella costume and Star Trek communicator. It is an addiction that I cannot break.
Then there are the sub cultures. As a child of the 70s growing up in the South West of England, my influences were Blakes 7, The Hitch-hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy and Doctor Who, a far cry from the sophisticated production and state of the art effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Close Encounters of The Third Kind. I’m still a dirty sci-fi kind of a girl, which is why I love Firefly above all the others – that wonderful escapism so deeply entrenched in reality. Give me a couple of horses and a ray gun over 3D virtual space walking any day.
So how did sci-fi become so rooted within my soul? Well, my parents were the generation that followed the space race, watched the moon landings live and imagined a future where, by the turn of the century, we would all be vacationing on Mars. They had that desperate need to believe, in the same way I leave out mince pies and sherry for Santa on Christmas Eve, long before my teenage children have gone to bed. They introduced me to the next best thing to actual space travel: they read me Carl Sagan as a bedtime story. It runs through my family’s DNA, it is part of our makeup.
Of course, that then leads to the level of commitment to which you aspire, the ‘nerdometer’ against which we measure ourselves. It is at these points of self-appraisal that I regress immediately to the primary school in order to assert my more highly tuned nerdiness, my deeper understanding and greater knowledge of all things nerd, over the pretenders around me.
How many times have you heard “I’ve watched Star Wars over 100 times,” as if that statement is some kind of badge of honour, membership of a club, extra merits for stamina, but few will admit that they did it purely to perfect their Chewbacca call or Hans Solo gait (although it has to be said, a sizeable proportion of time has been spent by half the audience studying Hans Solo in the utmost detail!
The real nerds embrace the commitment, the attention to detail. I cannot count how many months of my life have I devoted to creating the perfect fancy dress costume (and let me tell you, you do not attend a party dressed as a Borg if you intend to eat, drink, dance, sit or pee at any point during the event). Come on, who hasn’t got the T shirt with the obscure line from the film that only true fans would appreciate – why? To give that little nod, that knowing smile – ‘we know, we share something the rest of the world cannot understand’.
My children too have learned to live with science fiction, from being sent to school on mufti day as a very cute six year old Malcolm Reynolds, to attending Comic Con as Scarlet Witch. They knew there was no point in fighting it and so it is with a sense of pride that I dust the action figures and tidy away the Alien box set, knowing that I have done my job as a parent.
So yes, I am a sci-fi nerd and always will be. The costumes, the conventions, the DVD director’s commentaries, the fan clubs, the social media are so much part of the books, the films and the TV shows in which we can immerse ourselves. The more there is, the more we crave, which is perhaps why some of us go in to create our own, to be a part of it, to join in the party at a fundamental level. Why? It is because of a collective belief in humanity, in imagination, in possibility.
That is why I am a nerd. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
Isaac Asimov - "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." ("My Own View," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)
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