Heart, Soul And Faith In Unexpected Places: Science Fiction

People like to think of science fiction as a very specific thing: aliens, robots, intergalactic battles with spaceships, etc... Very geeky stuff, devoid of any sort of compassion and soul. If it's not filled with enough explosions, then it's not worth the time.

The thing is: that's a fallacy.

I was reminded of this when Spike TV was airing the original Star Wars trilogy last weekend. It has all of the things I mentioned in my first sentence. The prequels, released 22 years after the first film, included even more of that: bigger battles, more exotic aliens, shoehorned robots, and suddenly the main characters can defy physics!!! A geek's supposed dream. Yet the prequel trilogy is universally considered inferior to the original trilogy. Why is that?

Star Wars didn't become a pop culture landmark because it had cool space battles and lasers. The story famously incorporates elements of the hero's journey, which has been found throughout human history. The central components of Star Wars are themes that we can all relate to: good vs. evil, parent/child relationships, redemption, destiny vs. free will. The science fiction is simply a setting to place these ideas.
The excitement and tension in the action sequences exist because we've thought about the themes ourselves and the stakes are as high for ourselves as the characters. We want to tell ourselves that the fallen can step back into the light. If good doesn't prevail in our entertainment, then what hope do we have in real life? On the other hand, the prequel trilogy tries to explain everything through biological/scientific processes: our destiny is set by organisms in our bloodstream. We're told this directly, leaving no room for us to apply what our hearts/minds tell us. The result: the action's only effect on us is to say "That's cool" (at best).

Speaking of biology, an ongoing battle that is being fiercely played out in society is creationism/intelligent design vs natural selection/evolution. One side routinely accuses the other of having an imaginary friend in the sky, while the other says the generally accepted science is meaningless. The novel, Contact, by Carl Sagan addresses the debate in an intelligent way (much more so than the movie - which is still good). Major spoilers ahead. The story focuses on an astronomer, Ellie Arroway, and how she leads the investigation into a signal picked up outside of this solar system. The signal is decoded into a set of instructions for a vehicle that leads to... well, nobody's sure. Who do we pick as human ambassadors? Ellie wants desperately to go, but is considered not representative of humans because she doesn't believe in a higher power. Circumstances lead to Ellie's selection and on the misson, she encounters a sort of intergalactic subway system and meets an alien taking the form of her father. The alien doesn't know who built the subway, only that some beings before the aliens species did. Ellie comes back to Earth, only to find a skeptical government: all of the recording equipment picked up only static the entire trip. Ellie, a person who always relied on tangible evidence for her own personal beliefs, can't prove what she knows in her heart to be true. There is a later implication that the entire universe has pi woven into its fabric, an indication that an intelligence built everything we know. It's rare to find material that addresses both viewpoints fairly and allows for them to be valid. Again, it's the setting that enables the conversation to play out.

Here's a few other quick examples (again, spoilers):

• Inception has a famously ambiguous ending. But why people care so much if it's just a cool film? It's not the layers of mind-bending action. We care because we want Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to be reunited with his kids in life. We empathize with Cobb because he had good intentions in trying to bring his wife back from insanity and the result was her death. Even the core of the team's plan was an emotional play: reconciliation between father and son. 
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer is not about a teenager kicking demon butt. It's about growing up and coming to terms with your life. Anyone who's seen the show enough knows that the antagonists are often metaphors for major life milestones.
• Lost had a lot of viewers stick around to find out what's up with polar bears and time traveling. The ending was polarizing for not explaining these things and turning the finale into a class reunion/utopia dreamland. But the core of the show is relationships and character motivations. I admit to tearing up quite a few times throughout the series and the ending was fine for me.

Come for the spaceships and aliens. Stay for the insights and questions that makes us human.