Once upon a time, in an America not so long ago or far away, science fiction was a cult.
Today it’s more like an ATM.
Science fiction has totally infiltrated the mainstream media, powering hit TV shows, monster video games and nine-figure blockbuster movies even as it maintains its thriving roots in places like comic books, magazines and graphic novels.
To celebrate all this, the TV channel Syfy will mark its own 25th anniversary Friday by releasing a series of 15 podcasts from giants of the genre, including Neil Gaiman, Frank Oz, D.C. Fontana, Ron Moore (below right), Chris Hardwick, Kevin Smith, and David X. Cohen.
The podcasts are hosted by Adam Savage (left), who is best known as the host of Mythbusters and whose extensive sci-fi resume over the years includes work on Star Wars, the Matrix sequel, Terminator 3 and more.
Surveying the broader landscape of sci-fi these days, Savage agrees with his podcast guests that there’s a whole lot to like.
“Science fiction has definitely become more mainstream,” he says. “It’s no longer just for me and a few of my friends who play Dungeons and Dragons.”
The breakthrough came around a quarter century ago, suggests Savage, which coincides nicely with the Syfy anniversary.
“You had Star Wars in 1977,” he notes, “and then within a five- or six-year period we got Alien and Bladerunner. And John Carpenter’s The Thing.”
It did take more than a magic wand to get sci-fi out of the cult genre slot and into the mainstream. “Bladerunner didn’t do that well when it came out,” Savage notes. “It was considered a flop. Now it’s a classic.”
What’s also been happening in recent years, Savage explains, is that writers and producers of traditional dramas have been inserting sci-fi elements in a way that makes mainstream viewers comfortable.
He points to the late Elmore Leonard’s novel Touch, in which a character heals people with the blood from stigmata on his hands.
“Leonard doesn’t write it as something weird,” says Savage. “It’s just part of the story, so the reader accepts it.”
The hit Starz series Outlander, based on Diana Gabaldon’s books, has taken a similar approach. The main character finds herself time-traveling 200 years, which is a little out of the ordinary, but everything else is grounded in recognizable reality. She has strong, traditional relationships and experiences on both ends of her journey.
So viewers who wouldn’t call themselves sci-fi fans accept this premise and get into the drama.
What helps, Savage suggests, is how rapidly technology has turned the sci-fi of a few years ago into the realities of today.
“What my smartphone can do far outstrips anything they imagined back on the early Star Trek,” he says. “It’s wonderful that 2017 is far more fantastical than I could possibly have envisioned in 1985, when I graduated from high school.”
Today we’re having serious discussions about sending Earthlings to Mars, while at the same time other techies have turned video special effects from tenuous business into an art form.
Today’s CGI makes it possible for TV, film and video producers to create realistic special effects that were impossible back when the biggest achievement was to hide the guy wires behind the flimsy prop.
“Technology is indispensable for sci-fi,” says Savage, and he suggests that producers and directors have increased their own sophistication as the technical possibilities have grown.
“You remember back in the Buck Rogers days, you’d have people walking around spaceships in evening clothes,” he says. “Today those scenes are much more realistic. They stay on point.”
For one thing, they have to, because viewers have also become more sophisticated and don’t hesitate to call the creators on an inaccurate setting or setup.
Savage admits that issue leads to debates inside sci-fi fandom, centering on whether “a show that’s deeply flawed” in some technological aspect can still be entertaining if its dramatic elements work.
“Before anything else, you need a good story,” says Savage. “That’s a point on which every single person we interviewed for the podcasts agrees: The story is huge. If you don’t have the story, nothing else matters.”
When you do, though, you often get the bonus of well-crafted if at times subtle commentary on social and cultural issues.
“Sci-fi has often been a vehicle for examining the culture,” says Savage. “You saw how, in Star Trek, Gene Rodenberry took a strongly humanist view of the world.”
In any case, however nicely sci-fi is humming along at the moment, Savage admits there are still planets to conquer.
“In some ways, sci-fi still occupies a weird cultural space,” he says. “In the movies, on TV, in comic books, it’s an absolute juggernaut. But in ‘serious literature,’ which is considered our highest form of art, it’s still a marginalized genre. The bastard child.”
Savage’s guests in the upcoming podcast will doubtless touch on that issue, as well as a rainbow of other sci-fi matters and a whole lot of anecdotes about their work on shows from Star Trek to Outlander.
The podcasts will be available on syfy.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Play. The Syfy channel itself will be showing short videos based on several of the podcasts.