Is #ScienceFiction Lazy?

Which Doctor would you want to pluck you effortlessly from your humdrum life?

Science fiction may be the laziest genre because it revels in easy solutions: Why walk if you can warp?

Science fiction often hand-waves away obstacles that are insurmountable or inconvenient. As an author, I’m not going to work out real solutions to every problem – a colony on Mars (a story I’m working on) recycles all its wastes, but I won’t design the water treatment system. (Though, now that I think about it, space toilets can be fun.)

There may never be a Star Trek Enterprise or even a quick hop to another star, and nothing suggests it’s possible to flit through time and space like Doctor Who’s TARDIS. Stories have different levels of reality – at least the Enterprise crew has an employer, but how does the Doctor stock his wardrobe room, or the kitchen for that matter?

In slate.com Jacob Brogan says “Luke [Skywalker] is a slacker, and when he looks to the heavens, he imagines release from the obligations that bind him to the surface of Tatooine… Technology in such stories typically has more to do with workarounds than it does with work.”

Brogan finds that heroes not only escape the real world, they have an easy time becoming “super.”

“In The Matrix, Neo effortlessly learns a host of new skills that would normally take years to develop – the ultimate slacker fantasy.” Harry Potter may have homework, but Hogwarts only teaches those born with magic. (If you’re thinking Harry Potter’s not science fiction, forgive me, but science fiction and fantasy often blur together.)

Science fiction is a huge genre and not all heroes have it so easy. Some characters struggle and there are both happy and tragic endings.

Science fiction sometimes deals with inconvenience – you’ll find generational ships schlepping between stars and space station janitors. But there will also be fantastic elements you have to simply accept – sometimes technical (space war) and sometimes social (raising clones for spare organs). But that’s part of the fun. I’m already living in the real world. I want to read about something amazing and maybe imagine being part of it. That’s why it’s called fiction.