Sci-fi in sci-fi media

[Biggshow]

So I'm watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and it occurs to me that I would love to see a scene in a sci-fi movie/tv show about first contact where someone in charge of the military gets royally pissed at everyone telling him/her to take military action and says, "They're a technologically advanced species. They could wipe us out by sneezing hard. The only chance we've got is to talk to them. Don't any of you watch sci-fi movies? Stand down!"

Why does it appear that sci-fi doesn't exist in the world in sci-fi media?

Just asking for a bit of realism. And grumbling.

Of course then we wouldn't get to see things blow-up real good.

 

[Mistral]

Jerry Pournelle wrote an 'invasion of the Earth' story once where the surviving US government's crack advisory team was composed entirely of sci-fi writers. Turtledove's primary character(human,US) in his Colonization septology was a baseball-playing scifi fan who got "recruited" by the military 'cause he was the only 'out-of-the-box' thinker they had handy at the time.

 

[Lindley]

In Stargate SG-1, Teal'c has seen Star Wars nine times as of season 5.

Firefly featured the following exchange:

Wash: "Yeah, but psychic? That sounds like something out of science fiction."
Zoe: "You live on a spaceship, dear."
Wash: "So?"

In John Ringo's Posleen novels, the initial designs for humanity's defense fleet and combat armor and provided by a team of science fiction writers, since they're the only ones who have devoted a lot of time to thinking about the mechanics of space combat.

 

[Admiral2]

Why does it appear that sci-fi doesn't exist in the world in sci-fi media?

It does exist, but, just like in real life, most average people don't read it or watch it.

So you're actually getting the realism you're looking for.

 

[Christopher]

So I'm watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and it occurs to me that I would love to see a scene in a sci-fi movie/tv show about first contact where someone in charge of the military gets royally pissed at everyone telling him/her to take military action and says, "They're a technologically advanced species. They could wipe us out by sneezing hard. The only chance we've got is to talk to them. Don't any of you watch sci-fi movies? Stand down!"

Why does it appear that sci-fi doesn't exist in the world in sci-fi media?

Just asking for a bit of realism. And grumbling.

I have the same feeling whenever I see a story in which an entire building, ship, city, planet, or whatever is placed under the complete control of a single central computer without human supervision. I mean, you'd think that if they'd ever seen the twenty-nine thousand earlier stories featuring that idea, they'd know they're basically guaranteeing that the computer will either a) gain sentience and try to kill everybody or b) get hacked by a bad guy who tries to kill everybody.

 

[Australis]

I thought of the Niven-Pournelle novel, 'Footfall', too.

One scene it it made me laugh out loud: the writers are having dinner, and a big lobster on a bed of rice comes out. One writer looks at it and says, "Don't worry, we here at Sector General can save you".

 

[Biggshow]

Why does it appear that sci-fi doesn't exist in the world in sci-fi media?

It does exist, but, just like in real life, most average people don't read it or watch it.

So you're actually getting the realism you're looking for.

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to post this but with "Independence Day", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", etc. being big hits, I'm guessing someone in the military has seen at least one of them.

Mostly I'm just grumbling. Thanks for all the references to other books (got a new reading list out of it at least).

 

[Cutter John]

Because having an imagination is generally discouraged in Hollywood films?

i.e. because 'sci-fi fans' are all nerds and only exist to be rediculed and held up as examples of how NOT to act and think.

 

[Canadave]

There's often nods to sci-fi in Robert J. Sawyer's novels. One bit in Calculating God actually involved the main character introducing an alien to Star Trek, with the alien unable to tell the difference between Spock and the humans on the show.

 

[Reverend]

Farscape as I recall featured loads of sci-fi and pop culture references. Crichton even shouted at a bunch of aliens in Klingon.

 

[Extrocomp]

I always find it hilarious that it takes so long for the main characters in a zombie movie to figure out that zombies can be killed by shooting them in the head. So many bullets have been wasted and so many lives have been needlessly lost because the idiots kept shooting them in the chest. It's pretty obvious that most zombie movies are set in a world where there have never been any zombie movies.

One exception I can think of is Return of the Living Dead, which refers to Night of the Living Dead as a movie that was based on real events. The main characters cut off a zombie's head to kill it, but it doesn't work!

 

[Meredith]

The BBC show Hyperdirve also has a series called "Captain Helix" that the captain was a huge fan of.

 

[Australis]

In which case we can't forget Captain Proton.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

No matter how hard we try.

 

[David cgc]

There's often nods to sci-fi in Robert J. Sawyer's novels. One bit in Calculating God actually involved the main character introducing an alien to Star Trek, with the alien unable to tell the difference between Spock and the humans on the show.

In Dan Simmons' Illium and Olympos, one of the main characters, belonging to a race of artificially intelligent robots left behind by mankind in the distant future, is a Star Trek fan, which was apparently a minor sensation among the robots. At one point, in a very serious meeting of the robot leadership, the robot in question would drop slightly wrong references (stuff like "splaser" and "Bring us out, Scotty") to see who would correct him and was, thus, another fan. And another of the robots, upon meeting a human resurrected from the 20th century who mentioned he knew of Star Trek immediately asked him if he thought there was a homoerotic subtext to Kirk and Spock's friendship.

 

[Capn Flukie]

What about that sci-fi show on Stargate that was essentially a parody of Farscape, Wormhole X-Treme, or something like that?

Found it;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCNDdlCo4rA

edit:

oh and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeEbozKM7y8