Surprise, people: I’m a hardcore science fiction fan.

I’ve been heavily invested in the genre ever since childhood, and I place 99% of the blame for this on my old man. (The other 1% was my natural childhood fascination with all things scientific.) You see, my father read a lot of science fiction novels when he was growing up, and when I was a kid, I rifled though his endless boxes of them. It was here that I learned about all of the classic science fiction writers. Science fiction television and film may be great, but anyone worth their salt knows that the absolute best in science fiction is always found in book form. (And given my disappointment with recent science fiction television, I’ve been delving even more into books lately.)

If it was in those boxes, I read it. I’m sure I’m forgetting quite a few, but just to rattle off some names: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, James P. Hogan, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Frederick Pohl, Ursula K. LeGuin, Larry Niven, Cordwainer Smith, Clifford D. Simak…seriously, just pick a legendary science fiction author, and I can guarantee that I’ve read at least a few of their books thanks to my father’s collection and the local libraries. My father was also responsible for introducing me to the Dune saga, and I’ve been [Maker] hooked ever since. My home library of Frank Herbert’s works now spans an entire shelf!

I’m telling you, I filled my head to the brim with that stuff, especially hard science fiction. It was so chock-full, it’s a wonder I was able to process other more important items, like schoolwork, eating, and breathing. Even my favorite comic book characters, like Green Lantern, Iron Man, Firestorm, and Adam Strange are all completely based in the realm of science fiction! When I was a kid, no one else was into the genre, but that didn’t really register; in retrospect, I suppose it made sense that the other kids were more interested in sports and video games than a bunch of dusty old books.

I’ve kept up on my passion for science fiction throughout my entire life. I enjoy a wide variety of science fiction television, film, and other media. I’ve also gotten into the “new breed” of science fiction writers over the years, like Neal Stephenson and Timothy Zahn, as well as picking up novels by classic authors that I missed, such as E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series and the works of Richard Matheson.

Nowadays, science fiction is arguably more popular then ever, primarily in the film and television realms. Regardless, I find myself standing apart from my peers when it comes to the span of my familiarity with the genre. This is not a holier-than-thou proclamation, simply a statement of fact. I’ve just noticed that most of my peers aren’t into science fiction to begin with, and the ones that do enjoy the genre rarely (if ever) explore the breadth of the material out there, especially its written form. (The latter certainly isn’t their fault, as most people don’t read for pleasure these days as it is!) This unfamiliarity can be personally frustrating, as when I try to have engage in conversation about much of this stuff, I get blank stares.

I don’t understand why someone would refer to themselves as a fan of a genre when they have very little experience with it, or sometimes refuse to experience anything but a few small pieces. To use a non-fandom example, it would be like someone who’s read a medical textbook calling themselves a doctor. Now, this is different than being a fan of a specific property within a genre, or even a subgenre. There’s fans of the Star Trek film that came out last year, but who do not consider themselves fans of the Star Trek franchise in general. I’m also not trying to say that any self-proclaimed science fiction should check out and enjoy every new bit of genre material that comes along, either. We all know that like any other genre of fiction, there’s an extreme amount of absolute shit when it comes to science fiction.

Obviously, other hardcore science fiction fans do exist out there, and the Internet would provide the best way to connect with them. However, as with most things, I’m very reluctant to join Internet forums and the like devoted to science fiction. Intelligent discussion I can handle; fanboyism and nerd debates I can not. As we know, that’s what a majority of message board topics devolve into, so I tend to stay the hell out. Another idea would be science fiction conventions, but those can be very scary places. There’s not much left after that, but I’ve gotten along just fine so far, so I’ll just have continue forging the path alone.

Out of the blue, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend of mine a while back about a regional comic book/scifi/fantasy/gaming convention she had attended. (No, it wasn’t the Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con.) I asked her how the show went upon her return, and she replied that it was mediocre; there weren’t many dealers or booths, and the crowd was mainly “lower-caste geeks.” I wasn’t quite sure what that term meant, so I asked for more details. She told me this group was composed of stereotypically overweight anime fangirls and World of Warcraft obsessives.

Now, this post is not meant to claim that my friend is somehow an elitist for placing one group of geeks below another; her “lower-caste” term was clearly meant as a joke, as she was just fishing for a funny term to describe the crowd. (She’s a comic book cosplay nerd herself, so she didn’t really “fit in” with most of the other patrons.) Instead, I want to examine an interesting trend that’s been growing exponentially in geek circles over the past decade: subdivision of the overall geek crowd into smaller groups (a caste system, if you will), the game of one-upmanship that accompanies this behavior, and the absolute irony of the entire process.

Heated debates between geeks is nothing new; you could trace ‘em all the way back to Star Trek versus Star Wars arguments in the late 1970s, and I’m sure there were Flash Gordon diehards who disliked John Carter of Mars even further back. However, what bound everyone together was their love of the source material, and in the end, that was all that was important. In recent years, that common bond has been eroding, and the geeks have no one to blame but themselves.

With growing frequency, geeks are cramming one another into a caste system of their own making. My friend’s joke nonwithstanding, this is a very real and serious situation: geeks in one group are demonizing the other, but not out of the good-natured rivalry seen in the past. Geek subcultures literally hate each other now, and often consider certain groups “beneath” them as far as the nerdy social strata are concerned.

This is the colossal irony I spoke of. Geeks and nerds have always complained that they’re a misunderstood and maligned social group, shunned by the rest of the world. Well, look at what they’re doing with this caste system: the exact same thing! So, not only are they maligned as a whole, they’re actively pushing some of their own peers even lower down the social scale, making the entire problem even worse. How fucked up is that?

The Internet has certainly contributed to the caste system in a big way; just as it has brought nerds together, it also drives mountainous wedges between them. Case and point: video game console flame wars, which have gotten far uglier than even the famous Sega and Nintendo rivalry in the early 1990s. Now, we’ve got entire sites and forums devoted to elevating one nerdy hobby while bashing another. All this truly accomplishes is making geeks look even worse in the eyes of everyone else!

I’ve always been of the mind that you shouldn’t hate an entire group; just specific people inside said group that personally piss you off. For example, I can’t stand all of that Twilight shit, and I think the fan fervor over it is incredibly annoying…but I have friends who are into it, and I’d never consider myself “better” than them as a result.

Having said that, if a Twilight diehard nearly knocks me down at the bookstore in their frenzy to score yet another generic young adult novel, they’re going to get an earful of rage.

We’re in the final stretch of the popular television drama Lost, and everyone’s wondering if all of our questions will be answered. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of that show, and I can’t wait to see how it all wraps up!

It reminds me of another groundbreaking television program, where bits and pieces of mysteries running throughout the show were presented as episodes went by, all leading up to some grand conclusion that promised to explain everything. That show was the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. (SPOILERS AHEAD! Do not read any further if you haven’t finished watching the entire series!)

It’s been almost a year now since the BSG series finale, and during that time, I’ve come to realize something very important:

I was wrong.

The two-part ending, “Daybreak,” shocked me just like every other fan, for better or for worse. I decided at the time that while it wasn’t perfect, it was still a great ending. In retrospect, I was definitely viewing the finale through rose-tinted glasses due to my love for the show. I’ve had this problem before, as I’m only human. I made the same mistake with the 2007 Transformers film and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I liked them at first, but only later did I realize how crappy they really were! This change of heart sadly applies to the BSG finale, as well.

I had written up a big post defending “Daybreak” late last summer, but I think that was just a kneejerk reaction, or worse, a subconscious way of trying to justify my own thoughts and feelings on the matter. Articles and reviews I’ve read since then have completely deconstructed every feeble defense I had thought up. I’ve had no choice but to accept the superior and correct logic of those articles, and I have actually removed my original post; that’s something I almost never do. I may sound like an asshole on this blog, but I still have to admit when I’m wrong! Besides, that post made me sound like a mindless fanboy (you know how I hate that), and quite frankly, it was embarrassing.

So…why was I wrong about the BSG finale? Aside from problems within the final episode (which I’ll get into momentarily), another issue was the fact that I considered BSG to be the best science fiction television program ever made. As such, I had built it up to lofty heights within my mind; most other fans had done the same thing. From there, the only logical place was down; we just didn’t realize at the time how far it could’ve fallen. I have no one to blame but myself on this particular point.

On to the problems with “Daybreak” itself. The finale started out great, but in the last hour, the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards. It was revealed that everything that had transpired in BSG all boiled down to one thing: “God did it.” Now, that may seem like I’m painting the series with a broad brush, but “God did it” has become the commonly accepted description of what happened, and sadly, it’s accurate. BSG’s finale was a deus ex machina in a very literal sense! (Note: BSG’s God is clearly not any god or gods found in our real-life religions; it’s just been referred to within the show as “God” for simplicity’s sake, I’m assuming.)

During the decisive battle aboard the Cylon Colony, we discover that all of the prophecies and visions experienced by various humans and Cylons alike have led up to the scene where the Final Five are standing above Galactica’s bridge. That’s fine and dandy, and made for one hell of a powerful piece of cinematography…until it was revealed that God had put these visions in the characters’ heads, and directed all of the humans’ and Cylons’ paths throughout their journey. Did the characters act according to their own free will? Not according to “Daybreak.” If the characters truly had free will, then the events of the finale would have been impossible. In fact, in order for those events to unfold as we saw them, God must’ve been pulling the strings behind virtually every single event during the series to make things happen according to its grand plan, including the Fall of the Twelve Colonies! (Former EFF chairman Brad Templeton wrote up a list of events that required divine intervention in order for the series to proceed; there’s an astounding number of them.) This, far and away, is the finale’s biggest flaw, as it casts aside all of BSG’s drama, mystery, and tension on the whims of a deity.

A perfect example of this is the case of Kara Thrace (aka Starbuck). She committed suicide during the third season, but mysteriously reappeared alive and well at the end of that season. We knew something brought her back, but we didn’t know what, or how; it was another enthralling mystery to add to the pile. Well, it turns out she was then resurrected by God to bring the humans and rebel Cylons to the new Earth, and shortly after she got there, she just vanished. That’s nothing but a cop-out, and this particular plot point is one I’ve always had a problem with. (I honestly think the writers just didn’t know how to resolve her storyline anymore.) Plus, the fact that she was unwittingly trained by God since childhood through the Music, the paintings of the Eye of Jupiter, and so on simply to punch in the coordinates to Earth at a very specific time just ended up being silly.

I realize that some fans might want to fall back on the old science fiction cliché that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If you go that route, God and its “angels” (the visions of Six and Baltar) are easily classified as a technologically superior alien race that’s been helping the humans and Cylons for unknown reasons. (BSG writer and fourth season co-executive producer Jane Espenson believes this is the case.) Even with this explanation, though, you’re stuck with same problem as “God did it”: the characters aren’t the driving point behind the show anymore, as their actions are subject to whatever entity is secretly controlling them and orchestrating every event.

“Daybreak” also stretched some concepts beyond the realm of plausibility, even for a science fiction show. Case and point: the thirty-thousand or so remaining humans decided to give up all technology and live on their new Earth. Perhaps some of them would’ve gone for it, since they’d been living inside cramped spaceships for so long; but I’d venture that most of them would not. They had no problem building a small town using their existing technology on New Caprica, and I don’t see any reason why they would’ve changed their minds months later. Would the last remnants of the human race really ditch their medicine and supplies in favor of hunting and gathering, which they had no idea how to go about doing? I don’t think so. If the refugees had decided to keep their technology and form their own secluded city, that would’ve made more sense…especially if said city came to be known as Atlantis. (Since there was a battlestar named Atlantia in the BSG miniseries, the name isn’t without precedent.)

Let’s get back to the “God did it” problem. The whole mess could very easily have been avoided: just don’t mention “God” at all during the ending! Leave the characters’ visions and such unexplained, while keeping everything else intact. The humans and Cylons find the new Earth, as was expected, but as to why the prophecies came true…leave that up to the imagination. BSG’s strength was its characters, and I don’t think that these unsolved mysteries wouldn’t detract from that. Sure, such an ending might’ve pissed off a lot of fans, but not as many as the actual ending did.

If you must explain the visions and prophecies, then perhaps since the Colonial humans clearly evolved on a world that’s not our own, some of them could havve evolved enhanced mental abilities. Characters with clairvoyant “powers” are not uncommon in science fiction, and such a thing certainly wouldn’t have been out of place here. Kara Thrace’s resurrection is still a stick in the mud, but I don’t think there was any getting around that, as I mentioned earlier.

Even Six and Baltar’s visions of angels could be explained logically; since both characters carried such a tremendous weight of guilt over their deeds, it would’ve been perfectly understandable if the angels were just hallucinations, their consciences made manifest. (That’s what most fans thought they were up until the finale, anyway.)

Last but not least…there’s another tried-and-true method of explaining away knowledge of future events: time travel. At some point in the future, the humans, Cylons, or their descendants find a way to warn their ancestors about what happened, hence “all of this has happened before, and will happen again.” The obvious problem with this explanation is that time travel has been absolutely beaten to death within science fiction over the past few decades. It would’ve been nearly as bad as “God did it.”

The problems found in “Daybreak” may affect the BSG prequel series Caprica, but so far, we haven’t seen any direct evidence of this. Religion is part of Caprica’s plot much as it was in BSG, but as long we don’t discover that Zoe Graystone’s avatar only works because God said so, I think the show will stand well enough on its own. We know that God is pulling the strings and controlling everyone behind the scenes due to “Daybreak,” but since we don’t know specifically what’s going to happen with the new characters we’ve seen, there’s still some room for mystery.

Furthermore, none of the God stuff was part of the plot in The Plan, the direct-to-video BSG film released last fall. (In fact, I don’t recall God being mentioned at all, except for John Cavil’s sarcastic remarks.) The result? The Plan was a good story in its own right that perfectly weaved in and out of the first two seasons of BSG.

Okay, I’m done. Please don’t see this as a “Fuck Battlestar Galactica!” post. I still consider it a good science fiction television show; I just hated the ending. Sure, the acting, special effects, music, and cinematography were all top-notch; I just don’t particularly enjoy the way series creator Ron Moore and crew went about it sloppily resolving the show’s mysteries, and retconning the entire series as a result. (You know how much I fucking hate retcons.) I was so caught up in the hype that I couldn’t accept this until recently, and I feel like a fool.

Now that you’ve read my take on the BSG finale, I suggest you check out the following articles. Don’t just brush them off; they make logical arguments that you really can’t ignore.

• Battlestar’s “Daybreak,” the worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction, by Brad Templeton. I know the title of his post sounds overly harsh, but trust me, it’s worth reading. Templeton delves very deeply into the “God did it” problem, as well as many glaring scientific problems present in the finale. (This is the same author of the list I spoke about earlier in this post.)

• In God We Rust: Final Thoughts on Battlestar Galactica, by Robert Bland. An excellent examination of how BSG radically switched from being a character story into an idea story, and why that switch didn’t work.
• As Battlestar Ends, God is in the Details, by Annalee Newitz. Here’s a more positive spin on the ending, including mention of the technology/magic cliché.
• Not in Our Stars: The Betrayals of the Battlestar Galactica Finale, by Sam J. Miller. The author takes issue with such a generic happy ending to a series that never worked that way.
• It is finished: Battlestar Galactica: “Daybreak” – Part 2, by Norm Doering. The author speaks about the finale’s transhumanist failings and the “philosophy of ignorance.”

I just hope Lost has a better conclusion than BSG did…I swear, if the Island is God or some other such nonsense, I’m going to throw up.

It always bugs me when I see people shamelessly supporting and defending a favorite creator, actor, or other celebrated personality no matter what they do. For example, if an author writes an excellent book, does that mean that all of his or her other books or works are automatically good, as well? Of course not, yet far too many people subscribe to this dangerous belief. (This blind devotion completely explains the popularity of Joss Whedon.)

This is not to be confused with being excited for future projects by a favorite creator; the difference is recognizing loss of quality when it applies. No creator has a perfect track record; everybody’s human, after all.

I’m a fan of writer J. Michael Straczynski, especially his work on Babylon 5 and Rising Stars, so I was eager to check out his take on Spider-Man in the early 2000s. Well, it started out good…but then it went straight into the shitter. Some JMS fans still praised it as the best thing to the happen to the book; I wonder what was going through their heads, because diehard Spidey fans certainly didn’t agree.

Furthering the comic book example, let’s look at novelist Charlie Huston. He’s written quite a few popular novels; I read one of them (Already Dead), and while I didn’t find it to be awful, I didn’t find it to be great, either. It was just an average urban vampire novel. (And we know how that whole genre has been beaten to death.) Like many other comic book readers, however, I first discovered his work through the relaunch of Moon Knight a few years back. Well, Huston’s novels may be decent…but his comic book work was atrocious. The Moon Knight relaunch read like a crappy Grand Theft Auto clone, focusing on excessive violence and shock value rather than character development or adherence to the source material. Yet, fans of his Moon Knight work automatically praised his novels, and vice versa!

This kind of fanboy loyalism just doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re not bound by law to automatically defend your favorite properties, nor are you required to like the entire breadth of a creator’s work. If they go sour, so what? You gotta take the good with the bad. It happens to everyone and everything. Just ask any Star Wars fan.

Jeez, I even see people defending things they haven’t even seen yet!

It’s time for me to defend the infamous Star Trek: Enterprise. As the last Star Trek television program produced, it’s endured a massive amount of flak, both for fair and completely unfair reasons. Still, the fact remains that it was an underrated series, and it was cut off following a massive upswing in quality.

First, let’s examine some of biggest problems fans and detractors had with Enterprise (aside from the godawful theme song). Coming hot off of the heels of Voyager, the previous Star Trek series, Enterprise was created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who together had spent a very long time working on the Star Trek franchise. Of course, this went to their heads after a while, as seen by the cheesiness and low quality of many Voyager episodes. As a result, fans feared the same fate for Enterprise, and the fact that it was a prequel series didn’t help matters.

Not only did Berman and Braga run roughshod over established continuity, much of the technology shown on Enterprise appeared to be far in advance of that seen on the original Star Trek series…which was supposed to take place over a century later! In some cases, it was more advanced than technology seen on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager! In fact, the look of Enterprise’s titular ship, the NX-01, was clearly based on the Akira-class vessels first seen in Star Trek: First Contact. You could write this off as the Akira class being designed with “nostalgia” in mind by 24th century engineers, but bear in mind that the average Star Trek viewer shouldn’t have to rationalize large chunks of the plot to make them work. (Personally, I do like the design of the NX-01, specifically the interiors; it looked like a submarine in space, which makes perfect sense!)

From a writing perspective, the show’s first two seasons were a bit sluggish. There were good episodes here and there, but the rest were either just average, a little boring, or downright horrible. There was even a continuity-smashing Borg episode; as if we weren’t sick to death of them on Voyager! Now, it is worth mentioning that The Next Generation also took a few seasons to really kick it into high gear, but that show was the first live-action Star Trek show we’d seen in nearly twenty years; it wasn’t coming off of three shows that aired seven seasons each in rapid succession, so it had breathing room, so to speak. Enterprise had ridiculously high standards to meet right out of the gate.

So with all of these problems, what made the show good? First and foremost, Enterprise had an excellent cast. While most were unknowns, the well-known actor Scott Bakula was so damned good that you never once thought “Hey, it’s the Quantum Leap guy!” Even when the cast got a crappy script, they poured their heart and soul into it. Granted, this behavior was common among all of the other Star Trek show casts, but the Enterprise cast really went above and beyond the call of duty to make their show work.

The supporting cast really carried their own weight, too. Not only did Enterprise see the return of the inimitable Jeffrey Combs, but his primary role on the show was that of Shran, a headstrong Andorian commander. The Andorians were a race only glimpsed a few times in Star Trek history, and Enterprise really fleshed out their history and civilization. They’ve proven to be one of the more interesting races in Star Trek lore as a result.

Speaking of other races, we also got to see a lot more of the Vulcans, which is always welcome. (They acted like dicks for the first few seasons, but that was smartly explained later on.) The Klingons showed up, too, and in the proud tradition of Deep Space Nine, we got more of an inside peek into their warrior culture. Of course, we were also introduced to countless new races, but most of them were handled deftly, and it made perfect sense: there was no Federation yet, so the NX-01’s mission of exploration was arguably more important than its successors.

Next we’ve got the special effects. Too many science fictions films may be a mess of computer-generated imagery (CGI) these days, but on television, Enterprise got it right. While I generally prefer real model work, I understand that using CGI is much cheaper, and you’ve also got more flexibility when filming complex space battles and scenery. The Enterprise visual effects crew managed to hit that sweet spot right between realism and seeming too over-the-top, which made every scene a treat. (Is it any wonder many of the crew also worked on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, which featured the finest special effects ever seen on a science fiction television show?)

Last but not least…Season Four.

You wouldn’t think that a mere fourth season of a television spinoff couldn’t be that important, but in Enterprise’s case, you’d be dead wrong. The show’s fourth season was, with few exceptions, nothing short of incredible. Newly appointed showrunner Manny Coto hired some of the best writers in the business to work on the season, and it shows. The writing team of Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, long known for their excellent Star Trek novels, cleared up many fans’ problems with the series’ depiction of Vulcans in a mere three episodes. Another three-part storyarc featured genetic supermen, last seen in the classic original series episode “Space Seed,” and the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That story even featured an ancestor of Noonien Soong, the man who built Data nearly two centuries later. What really made these episodes great was that aside from the rock-solid writing, they were filled with references to other Star Trek shows and events…without sounding forced or blindly obvious. That’s incredibly difficult to pull off in any long-running science fiction franchise, but the writers here managed it perfectly.

Of course, no discussion of the fourth season of Enterprise is complete without mentioning a little story called “In a Mirror, Darkly.” Mike Sussman wrote two episodes that were so jaw-droppingly amazing that even people who hated Enterprise from day one have claimed that “In a Mirror, Darkly” is some of the best Star Trek, if not the best, ever made. I shit you not. Watch it, and you’ll undoubtedly agree. Not only that, we got to see a Constitution-class starship in action again — the same class as the NCC-1701 Enterprise from the original series — and it was a potent reminder of just how powerful those ships were, even by modern standards.

The fourth season did have a few shitbomb episodes (including the horrendous “These Are the Voyages…”, which became the de facto series finale), but the quality of the good episodes far overshadowed them.

Was Star Trek: Enterprise perfect? Not by a long shot. But was it still a good show? Absolutely. Ignore the slathering diatribes spewed out by the haters, and watch the series in its entirety (or at the very least, check out Season Four). I’m sure you’ll agree that the show certainly wasn’t given its due respect.