Another Ridiculous Point in STV:TFF

[Hober Mallow]

Oh, I'm right there with you. But even in science fiction, sometimes less explanation is better. "2001" the movie, in which very little is actually explained, is much better than "2001" the book, in which Clarke goes to great lengths to explain everything.

I disagree entirely. I like the book much better than the movie. The only reason the movie made any sense to me at all is that I read the book first.

While I spent decades trying to forget the book in order to help me re-appreciate more freshly the movie (which I'd seen over 20 times in the theater by the late 80s.)

Not knocking the novel here; the chapter about the nature and evolution of extraterrestrials was fantastic. But it doesn't really inform with respect to the film (except perhaps in the HAL section), it kind of distracts instead.

As Gene Wolfe has said: “All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.”

That said, I do wish Trek would go a little further into the realm of intelligent science fiction. One way to start down that road would be to bring back the SF authors. There are just as many good SF authors today as there were back when Ellison, Sturgeon, and Bradbury were writing for television.

 

[Christopher]

That said, I do wish Trek would go a little further into the realm of intelligent science fiction. One way to start down that road would be to bring back the SF authors. There are just as many good SF authors today as there were back when Ellison, Sturgeon, and Bradbury were writing for television.

Although the TV industry has changed since then. It's much more staff-driven these days, not as open to freelance contributions. A few shows have had SF authors as regular paid consultants; Robert J. Sawyer was a consultant on FlashForward, a show loosely based on his novel, and John Scalzi was the science consultant on Stargate Universe. And as consultants they can contribute at least peripherally to the creative process and maybe occasionally contribute a script. But the bulk of the storytelling in modern shows is guided by the writers' room, and that's going to consist mostly of established TV writer-producers. There aren't many people who have gone from being SF novelists to TV producers -- Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens are the only ones I can recall off the top of my head.