Here's an interesting question, sent along in e-mail, which I've trimmed down to the bare bones:

"Do you think science in science fiction movies would be better if science education were better in the United States?"

This is of particular relevance to me since the home video release of Star Trek was this last Tuesday, and while watching with my wife I alternated my enjoyment of seeing the franchise revived with the aggravation of the science of the movie being aggressively bad, even for Star Trek. I've noted before with the Trek franchise that at this point one has to just let that go, but then I see "red matter" again and I want to hit something. Clearly, I have issues.

Let me be the first to say I'm a huge proponent of more and better science education in our schools. In the tech-oriented world of today, a firm grounding in science will make our kids economically competitive and also better able to understand the changes in the world around them. I think science education more than any other is subject to the whims of people who have social, religious or political goals, which can limit what and how much science kids learn. This is stupid and short-sighted. More bad things will happen because people don't understand science than will happen because they do. So yes: More science education, please.

That said, no I don't really think the science in science fiction movies would be better if suddenly everyone's baseline of science education here in the U.S. went up a notch or two. Why?

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Education Is Not the Answer for Star Trek's Bad Science" »

I was forwarded this New York Times article on James Cameron's scifi flick Avatar, and how the production and marketing of the movie will likely cost a staggering half-billion dollars. The friend who forwarded it to me wrote, "is this film ever going to make its money back?" Sure, it could, and probably will.

Some of the answers are in the article itself: First, the half-billion under discussion is not being fronted by a single studio (in this case, 20th Century Fox); it's the entire outlay of cash, which includes funds from two other movie companies that between them are covering 60 percent of the production costs. It also includes advertising deals where one company basically uses Avatar properties while promoting their own goods; the article notes Panasonic using Avatar clips as part of a $25 million effort to push its own home theater lines.

To be clear, Fox isn't getting off cheaply; when all is said and done it's going to be on the hook for at least a couple hundred million dollars in production and marketing costs. If the flick fails, it will hurt. But there's a difference between being on the hook for a half a billion, and being on the hook for half that.

Beyond that, there are other factors to consider.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Four Reasons Why Avatar Is Too Big to Fail" »

Last week I was noting the uphill climb scifi will have in winning the "Best Picture" Academy Award, but it's worth also noting that while it's hard for scifi to nab that prize, Oscar-winning directors don't have any problems directing science fiction. Last year's Best Director, Danny Boyle, made 28 Days Later, a science fictional look at zombies, while Ang Lee (who won the 2005 statue) tried his hand at Hulk. Peter Jackson has Bad Taste in his background, and Steven Soderbergh attempted a remake of Solaris. Other Oscar winners who directed scifi include James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and of course, Steven Spielberg.

That said, there are a number of interesting and influential directors who have yet to direct in the genre. Which naturally made me think of a column. Below you'll find my list of the ten directors I really think should make a scifi movie. In no particular order:

Martin Scorsese
He's the ultimate gritty urban portraitist, which makes him an unconventional choice, but also remember that Scorsese has some surprising works in his canon: The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence and Kundun all suggest he's not afraid to stretch out and surprise viewers and critics. I literally cannot imagine what a Scorsese scifi would be like, which is the best possible reason for him to try one.

Clint Eastwood
Eastwood came tantalizingly close to scifi with 2000's Space Cowboys (I disqualify it because the science of the movie is contemporary, not futuristic), so it's not a huge leap to having him in the genre. Eastwood would likely prize character struggle over technology and make a scifi flick grownups could love.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Ten Directors Who Really Need to Make a SciFi Movie" »

Hey! It's Halloween on Saturday! So naturally this is going to be a science fiction-related Halloween column, right? Wrong! Yes, Halloween, love it, mmmm, candy, etc. But, you know, I just don't feel like writing one of those. You want a scary science fiction movie? Fine: Alien. We're done. Go and have a spooklicious Saturday.

What I really want to talk about this week are the Oscars, which I talked about briefly a couple of weeks ago when I said I think the chances are low for a scifi movie to make it on an Oscar ballot. It's difficult to get one nominated in the best of years, and even with the Best Picture slate doubling, this hasn't been the best of years for science fiction. But thinking about getting scifi on the ballot made me think of the next step: winning the Best Picture award. What would it actually take for a science fiction flick to win it all?

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Five Ways a SciFi Movie Could Win Best Picture" »

An interesting question from the mailbag:

"Hey, Scalzi: Was science fiction ever cool?"

The answer: Well, no, not generally, but it depends on what you mean by "cool," which is a fairly fungible cultural term.

For example, there's "cool," as in "the studied indifference to cultural judgment regarding what you like," which means that you like what you like and you don't care if other people like it. Science fiction fails this definition utterly, because science fiction fans are monumentally uncool -- not because they are geeks and nerds, or at least, not directly because of that, but because generally speaking they really really really want you to love what they love, too, and that sort of insensible urge to share is the opposite of cool. Mind you, scifi fans understand other people don't love what they love, but rather than not caring, they feel a little sorry for those people. Which is a different dynamic altogether.

Continue reading "John Scalzi Answers the Burning Question - Can SciFI Movies Be Cool?" »

Hey folks, before we get to this week's column, let me take a moment to announce the winner of last week's "writing assignment" contest. We received nearly 100 entries, which is pretty awesome, and the entire comment thread is chock full of amusing science fictional goodness, which made it exceptionally hard to choose just one. But in the end, I was most impressed with this entry by Louise -- who not only made her "sidekick meeting" entry highly amusing, but also in the course of the entry managed to reference every other writing assignment option as well. Well done, Louise, well done indeed. That coveted DVD set of the original series of The Prisoner is yours. And thanks to everyone else for playing along.

Louise's choice of the "sidekick meeting" assignment was also prescient, because as it happens I've spent the last few days thinking about sidekicks in movies -- particularly in science fiction -- and what qualities make for a perfect scifi sidekick. After careful consideration, I have, in fact, determined the perfect science fictional sidekick.

It is -- of course! -- Chewbacca.

Why? Oh, let us count the ways.

1. He's alien
Dude's a seven foot pile of shag who walks around naked, save for a bandolier. He communicates by howling. He'll rip the arms off a droid just to make a point about sportsmanship. Face it, you're not going to run across anyone like that on a day-to-day basis. His very presence in the Star Wars series reminds you that there is more to life in the Empire than all those humans running about; Chewbacca is science fiction, in hairy, two-meter form.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Three Cheers for Chewbacca, SciFi's Ultimate Sidekick" »

This week, out here in what is occasionally called "the real world," I am an instructor at Viable Paradise -- a week-long writing workshop for aspiring science fiction and fantasy authors. Here we critique stories and novel excerpts, lecture on writing and publishing and have Q&A sessions about the writing life. Another thing we do is give our students writing assignments to help spur their creativity and, you know, make them feel like they're getting their money's worth.

But then I thought, "Why let the Viable Paradise students have all the fun?" Below you will find a selection of writing assignments, based on various science fiction movies and/or science fiction filmmakers. Write up one or more, and put them into the comments below (one writing assignment per comment -- keep them short and punchy). Here's the juicy part: I'll select my favorite from the bunch and AMC will award its author a DVD set of the original The Prisoner. It's that easy! Have fun.

1. Write a brief monologue from the point of view of the creature who burst out of the chest of John Hurt in Alien.

2. Whilst visiting an alien world to collect plant samples, one of your crew ran afoul of the local sentient life, forcing you to cut short the mission and then subsequently mount a rescue attempt to retrieve said crew member. Write the discipline report for the crew member, whom the local sentients labeled as E.T.

Continue reading "John Scalzi's SciFi Writing Contest" »

I'm going to engage in a bit of shameless self-promotion and tell you that this Friday marks the debut of Stargate: Universe, a television show for which I am the Creative Consultant, and if you wouldn't mind watching it (whilst, of course, setting your DVR to record AMC's scheduled offering Field of Dreams, and promising to watch all of it, including the commercials), I would be deeply appreciative. Appalling personal advertisement out of the way, the debut of Stargate: Universe is also notable because the television series has cinematic roots in 1994's Stargate, directed by Roland Emmerich, who would go on to make Independence Day and the upcoming 2012. And while Stargate has been the most successful science fiction movie-to-television crossover (SG:U is the third series that can trace its ancestry back to the movie) of course it's not the only one; a number of science fiction flicks have beamed down from the silver screen to the the small screen. How did they do? Let's take a look.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Defrosted astronaut Buck Rogers debuted in a comic strip, but made the jump to movies in a 1939 serial from Universal Pictures starring Buster Crabbe. Rogers actually jumped to TV twice: Once in 1950 for a single season on ABC (and for which no recordings exist), and then in 1979 for NBC, in the rather more well-known series starring Gil Gerard. NBC actually released the series pilot to movie theaters, where it did the modern equivalent of $60 million at the box office -- enough for the network to greenlight the project, which would last for two seasons. Incidentally, Buck Rogers may head back to the big screen; Frank Miller (The Spirit) is reportedly prepping a new version.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - The Best and Worst Television Adaptations of SciFi Classics" »

I think I caught some sort of bug (as in "flu," not as in "insect" or "small alien creature that will devour me from the inside, leaving only a squishy husk"), and that bug is making it difficult for me to string together thoughts longer than a couple of paragraphs. You know what that means: To the mailbag!

First question:

This year the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced it was doubling the number of nominees for the Best Picture Oscar. Does this mean a science fiction movie might actually have a chance this year?

It's funny; I think one of the reasons that the Academy is doubling up on nominees this year is because The Dark Knight didn't make the cut last year, which surprised a number of people, including me. And I do think we're going to see more of a range in this year's nominees. That said, so far this year the science fiction movies are not really grabbing me as Best Picture contenders, even with the expanded nominee slots.

Continue reading "Oscar Bait, Low-Budget SciFi and 3D Longevity - It's the Return of John Scalzi's Mailbag!" »

Last week I ranked the directors of the Star Trek movies, and I had ranked Robert Wise -- director of Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- fairly low on the totem pole: 5th out of 8, actually. To which some folks in the comment thread responded, "Yes, that's accurate, but to be fair, the 'director's cut' of the film is much better."

They're not wrong. The director's cut is only slightly longer in running time, but a significant portion of the movie is redone thanks to new edits and insertions by Wise (who, before he was an Oscar-winning director was Oscar-nominated as an editor for Citizen Kane). It's definitely the better version -- and perhaps would have been the original version had Wise and his crew not been rushed by Paramount to make a release date, forcing the movie into theaters in what was essentially a rough and unfinished form.

But -- and here's the question -- which of the two is the definitive version of the movie? Certainly the "director's cut" is the more polished and considered version, the one Wise didn't have to really worry about a deadline on. But for better or worse, the original version is the one most filmgoers have seen, is the version that garnered the reviews and the Oscar nominations (for effects and for the score), and is the version whose financial successes and artistic failures colored the way the rest of the series played out. So which is the "real" Star Trek: The Motion Picture?

Continue reading "Han Shot First! John Scalzi Examines SciFi's Special Extended Director's Cuts" »