Interpreting science fiction

I was listening to a Radio 4 programme last night called "I've never seen star wars". In this programme they make celebrities do things they have never done, and talk about their experiences. I should have said 'minor celebrities', because i've never heard of them.

Last night they made some poor woman read the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", because she had never read any science fiction. She was not impressed, denouncing it for not having any relationships of any substance in it, and expressing a preference for 'Sex in the City'. Well, on that last point alone I can tell that i am never going to get aong with her.

But I think she was mistaken to dismiss the whole genre of Science Fiction based on one book not having oestrogen-laced relationships.

Cynics dismiss SciFi as frothy nonsense about laser guns and space ships. But I think they are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Yes, there is the action and adventure of a good 'Star Wars' shoot-em-up, and I have to confess that Star Wars is pretty shallow in other areas. But the reason that I like SciFi is:

It defines a hypothetical culture and then explores how that society would work.

The technology, planets, spaceships, aliens and laser guns provide a background context for the hypothesis, and sometimes form it's main axioms, but really the story is about how people (or beings) behave in that hypothetical culture. Thus, SciFi is just a technique by which authors are able to make a clean break from our society, our culture, our technology, our planet, and look at how things would be if it were different.

The Androids book mentioned above was made into the cult classic film 'Bladerunner'. I love the film, not because it has action and robots, but because it looks at society. It presents a divided society, where the privileged elite live quiet sophisticated lives in tall buildings, isolated from the chaotic masses on the streets. It looks at a society with a sizable ethnic minority contributing to the economy of the city. On top of that layer it asks the questions of how that society relates to robots that are so advanced as to be hard to distinguish from humans - and it's not a pretty picture, exposing our natural prejudice against the 'other' that is a mirror of ourselves.

But on top of that there is the complex relationship between the hero of the story and the Androids he is supposed to 'retire'. And at the end, the final condemned android fights with the man sent to kill him, but then saves his life. There is almost something Christ-like about him. And the android's mercy is seen to triumph over mankind's inhumanity.

And they say it is frothy nonsence?