Have you ever met a person who thought sci fi was too violent or even a tool of Satan?

Are there really there so terrified of snakes they can't even handle a picture of one on a shirt?

 

Yup.

 

Well, snakes are evil!
If Is find that that there is a snake in my house, I will destroy my town with a abomb

 

Yes. One of them is another relative. Not naming that name either.

 

No.

 

My parents were very good about letting me read whatever interested me, but they did once ask me to leave my "Son of Satan" comic books at home when we visited Grandma.

 

Phobias can have strong effects on a person.

Kor

 

And the bondage?

 

Now, it may just be a "tall tale", but in the coffee table tome "The Illusion of Life, Disney Animation", one of the animators recounted an incident during the making of "The Jungle Book" (the 60s cel animated version). An office assistant refused to be in the room where they were screening "dailies" depicting Kaa, the snake. Consider, here is an absurdly cartoonish looking serpent talking with the falsetto voice of Winnie the Pooh (both were voiced by Sterling Holloway at that time) and this employee refused to look at the screen or even remain in the room because..."SNAKE!!!" So, unless the animator quoted was making up stuff, some people's phobias run that extreme.

 

My relative's phobia does not run that far.
Not doubting this report, though.

 

And now, I am wondering at the weirdness of a universe where Sterling Holloway and Scarlett Johansson can end up being voice-actor for the same character at different points in a given century.

Anyway...back to the topic at hand.

 

Story about a woman who would not leave her house alone for fear of the possibility of encountering a snake. This lasted for ten years.

Fear is not rational and it is not logical. It comes from a deeply reactionary part of humans. I have a Lego Spider in my counseling office and there are people who request it be put away during session as it makes them uncomfortable.

tl:dr-Don't underestimate a fear based reaction.

 

I gave your post a "like" for the bizarrely positive outcome to that account. From not venturing outside alone for fear of a chance encounter...to handling and demonstrating snakes at a nature center! Wow! Just...Wow!

 

The closest I ever got to a discussion about the evils of science-fiction was in a conversation with a guy about the transporters in Star Trek. He accepted the idea of dematerialization no problems, but he did have issues with the idea of rematerialization as he strongly believed that transporters killed people and resurrection was only possible through Christ. Period. Even in scii-fi. It simply can't be done. End of story.

Not wishing to fully open that can of worms, I quickly changed the subject to favorite foods...

 

Well, I guess the shirt thing really wasn't that unreasonable then.

 

That is an interesting take but it is essentially what the transporters do. They dematerialize something then send the data to he rematerialized somewhere else. By our standards they kill you and then create a new copy of you with your memories intact in another location.

 

Gotta disagree there. Yes, some people have seriously deep phobias. And yes, snake phobias aren't exactly uncommon - but the same is true of a million other things, too. You can't just demand no one ever wear a shirt (or have anything else) with a cartoon snake (or spider, or monster, or skeleton, ghost, shark, gun, knife, clown, full moon, etc, etc) anywhere in public.

Maybe if the shirt was super-graphic like something out of a horror movie, or if there was a specific person they *knew* was on the plane who absolutely couldn't handle it, then one could make a reasonable argument for it. Otherwise, no. You don't tell people they can't board a flight just because they're wearing a completely innocuous t-shirt that in all likelihood probably won't even be noticed by anyone.

 

I said as much in our conversation, but the problem the other guy had was with the "a new copy with your memories intact" part. Our talk was nearly twenty years ago, so I can't recall the specifics, but I think he equated memories with a soul and that was where he let me know we were treading upon a dangerous subject, sci-fi or not.

 

Exactly. As I said, this is CYA (Covert Your Ass) insecurity theater, and it's making travel more stressful than it has to be, simply to make it seem as if something's being done about terrorism when nothing actually is, and the terrorists (many of them domestic white supremacist ones) just figure out how to circumvent security to carry out an attack on United States soil like before.

This is why the United States needs to have the alternative of HSR rather than just planes all of the time (distances between cities and towns be damned.)

 

Try asking this kind of people to give a precise definition of "science fiction".

It will be a lot of fun.