Science fiction still fighting for a place in the sun

04 June 2010

John Howell

A while back we argued that science fiction authors and film makers are outcasts from the literary and film establishment, with critics using the worst examples of the genre as ammunition against it, many writers and producers even redefining the genre to avoid being tainted by the label. Using this technique George Orwell's science fiction dystopian classic 1984 and Aldus Huxley's excellent science fiction story of genetic and psychological manipulation, Brave New World - according to people who should know better - are good literary works, but not science fiction.

It seems that dodging the science fiction label is continuing full throttle. George Nolfi, director of the upcoming Philip K. Dick film adaptation The Adjustment Bureau, recently explained that his film, while based "very loosely" on Philip K. Dick's SF story Adjustment Team is "not science fiction".

"Sci-fi to me," he told Entertainment Weekly, "conjures up lasers and spaceships and time travel. This movie is told very realistically."

In a similar vein, Martin Koerber, a German film archivist and historian who supervised the latest restoration of Metropolis (the 1927 German science-fiction expressionist film directed by Fritz Lang) claimed recently that after the latest restoration:

"The balance of the story has been given back. It's now a film that encompasses many genres, an epic about conflicts that are ages old. The science-fiction disguise is now very, very thin."

This quote in relation to a film set in the future, with giant machines and a robot as one of the central characters!

Thanks to David Langford's Ansible newsletter for bringing these to my attention.

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