Moving Away From Science Fiction and Fantasy

I loved fantasy and science fiction, and I thought I still did. But sometimes when one looks back, you start seeing a pattern emerging, and well, you notice how all the little things have come together to tell you something huge.

I am no longer a fantasy/sci-fi fan like I used to be.

I mean, I used to be such a huge science fiction and fantasy guy. I still have boxes full of science fiction and fantasy novels, short story collections and the like, and a lot of movies on VHS. I started my journey into fantasy with Terry Pratchett back when I was eleven, and I read everything I could get my hands on by him. I then moved into a wider world of genre fiction as I grew older, hitting many of the classic authors before I headed to university... Douglas Adams, H.G. Wells, Ellison, Bradbury etc. And I enjoyed programs and movies in those genres as well. For instance, I can't tell you how many times I watched Willow as a child, but it was quite a bit.

There is that dark period I will refer to as the Piers Anthony year, which I will not speak of except to note that in retrospect, being upset at 16 that I felt I would never be as great a writer as he who shall no longer be named after reading Refugee. Then I read Stand on Zanzibar and a lot of the New Wave of science fiction, and those notions of idolizing that man were quickly dissolved.

Then I entered university, and I think that is the point when things started to slowly change for me. I was exposed to a wider variety of literary traditions and critical styles, and while I still read a lot of sf and fantasy, this was clearly where myself and this kind of genre fiction began to part company, and not in a condescending way. I just think that I moved away from science fiction and fantasy proper. At no point did I think that I deserved better or that it lacked merit. I just found myself drawn to other kinds of literature and narratives.

Aside from science fiction in parodying animation, like Futurama and The Venture Brothers, I haven't really been watching science fiction/fantasy based television. When I think about it, there are only two science fiction themes that still keep my interest, time travel and robots/mechs. Other than those two, I am almost indifferent to science fiction these days, and it happened so gradually that it was only when thinking about where I am now that I could finally admit it to myself.

Let's look at a quick checklist of recent series I've never watched:

Firefly (the Whedonverse in general), Doctor Who, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Farscape, V (the new one... I saw the original back when syndicated stations used to pick up old minis and recycle them)

I was even looking back at my top 25 list for the PS2, and aside from Ratchet and Clank, Disgaea, and TimeSplitters, which are all also funny, the entire list pretty much leans towards more contemporary, real world settings or tie-ins to existing media.

It was a shift rather than a break, because in the broadest terms, I still love genre narratives.... I just moved on to a different set of them (action/spy/mystery/crime). In retrospect, the fact that the Night Watch novels of Pratchett quickly became my favorites because they were police procedurals rather than straight up fantasy novels should have been a huge clue to me.

I hope that you, my geek brethren, can still accept me for who I am.

Tags: terry pratchett, piers anthony, disgaea, ratchet and clank, timesplitters, dhalgren, h.g. wells, asimov, firefly, doctor who, farscape, v, battlestar galactica, heroes, night watch, douglas adams, futurama, venture brothers