Navigation tools at bottom.

I must have been around ten or 11 when I first read a science fiction story. As to what is science fiction, there are many types, and like the saying goes, "I may not know what's good, but I know what I like." Let me start with a little of the history of science fiction.

What was the first science fiction story ever written? Some younger readers may say Star Wars, while older readers may know of Orson Wells' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which caused people to flee their homes in fear. Some may remember it back before even that, to Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

Well, those who KNOW argue amongst themselves. Some claim The Epic of Gilgamesh, from Ancient Mesopotamia, sometime between the 7th and 27th Centuries B.C., Plato's descriptions of Atlantis, ancient Indian epics such as the Ramayana, the True History written by Lucian in the 2nd century, some stories in One Thousand and One Nights, early Arabic stories such as Opinions of the residents of a splendid city or as late as 1000 years ago, the Japanese story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Also, there is at least one reference in the Jewish/Christian bible which sounds like aliens in spacesuits and spaceships!

Jumping forward, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan have both called Somnium (which means the Dream in Latin), written by Johannes Kepler around 1620 to 1630, as the first work of Science Fiction. Sadly, it caused his Mother to be arrested in a day and age of religious persecution and fear of Witchcraft!

Whenever it started, it goes back a long ways, and is a reputable medium of entertainment, not just for kids and kooks.

So, what is science fiction? Well, all I can say is that it is not science fantasy. In a bookstore they are often lumped together. Science fantasy is NOT science fiction. The former is based on strange mythical-like creatures. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are examples of fantasy. Let me say, I stay as far away from science fantasy as I can!

So, what IS science fiction? Mark C. Glassy says that 'the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you don't know what it is, but you know it when you see it.' I concur. That is as good a definition as any. There are many genre of science fiction. I encourage the reader to buy a few books, visit your library or surf the web. I am sure most Mensans will find it quite fascinating.

So, let me turn now to what science fiction has meant to me. Now, all types of science fiction do not appeal to me, and not all authors, either. From my youngest days, my three favorite authors were Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein.

I am sure many Mensans know Asimov was one of us! Although he had a PhD in Biochemistry, he spent his life writing, and not just sci-fi. Although he turned atheist (born a Russian Jew, his family moved to the US when he was young), he wrote a two-volume set on the Bible. In my grade school days I read many books by him on science, not science fiction. He could take the most complicated material and make it easy! Long ago I read two of his books, Opus One Hundred and Opus Two Hundred. For those of you who studied Latin, or saw the movie The Da Vinci Code, you know that opus means work or works. They contained bits of the best of his first and second hundred books! Some people I know do not read 17 pages a year; in Asimov's best year he wrote 17 books!

One of his famous series is the Foundation series; I am not sure how many of you are familiar with it. Fantastic Voyage was made into a movie. It deals with brain surgery so critical that it could be done only from inside the brain! A team, shrunk to microscopic size, is injected into the man's bloodstream. They battle their way to the site of the injury, fighting off monsters, such as white blood cells! However, I am sure many younger readers know his book, now a popular movie, I, Robot.

Sir Arthur is British, but lives in Sri Lanka. He and Asimov were the best of enemies. Or, so they pretended to their fans. An interesting fact; he owns and runs a SCUBA school. Some companies are mad at him. Decades before they thought to build geosynchronous telecommunication satellites, he had described them in such detail that the patent people will not issue those companies patents!

Like Asimov, he has written on many topics. One of his non-fiction areas is the underwater world. Still, he has written an awful lot of good sci-fi, too. Four of his books I especially like are called 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, 2061 and 3001. Perhaps some of you have seen the movies based on the first two? I recall watching 2001: A Space Odyssey the first semester of my freshman year at University with a large group of my classmates. Afterwards, we sat around discussing it, especially what the baby's embryo floating in space at the end represented. At CWRU, I was one of the dumbest students there! As a side note, one of the professors there wrote a book with the title, The Physics of Star Trek.

Heinlein is a little different. His sci-fi writing is more on the social side. He also tends to include a lot more of other special elements that the other two do not: social nudity and sex. He is not shy writing about multi-generational or polygamous relationships; in Friday, our heroine's love life is quite different. A couple husbands, a couple wives, and everyone's kids are everyone's kids!

I like space and time travel, future and alternative history, as well as the kind of now-society went wrong or utopian. I like sci-fi that deals with technology and that which deals with 'real people.'

Last month, in a report on a Penang creativity seminar, I mentioned the movie, Real Genius. It is one I feel Mensans would enjoy! I would be happy to rewatch it with you. It has a sci-fi undercurrent, but it is more properly a comedy. Some university students at a prestigious US West Coast university are set a task by their professor to make a 5-megawatt LASER. The students at the school are Mensan level. On the hopes that someone may want to take me up on my offer, I will forego a description here.

In The Probability Broach, we find a Denver detective in the 1980s. Meat is rationed. It is a serious crime to own gold, silver, vitamin C, marijuana and tobacco. Unlicensed air conditioners carry a long jail term. While tracking the murder of a physicist, he runs across a Libertarian group in his world, which advocates little, or better yet no government. Later, he gets blasted into a parallel universe; there everyone carries a gun, marijuana, tobacco - everything is legal. There are no laws, the government meets once every four years, has no power to do anything unless everyone agrees, and cannot raise taxes! Anarchist-capitalist utopia.

In Voyage from Yesteryear we see more feasible space travel. The US fears WWIII could wipe out life and wants to make sure the American Dream will continue. They cannot send a manned mission, so they have robots and technology take human DNA to seed a distant planet. Fifty years later they send a colony ship of nearly 50,000 people, with a HUGE army. When they arrive, they tell the people, 'Take us to your leader.' 'What's a leader?' They try to take over the station and planet. The newly arrived Americans ask, 'how much is this?' They say, 'You'll pay later.' 'How?' 'You will.' (Barter system). The American invasion force tries to take over and finds they never had a chance. Anarchist-communist utopia.

The Forbin Project (a.k.a. Colossus and its sequels), a series of three books, the first was made into a movie. In the first book, Dr. Forbin makes a computer to take over the control of the USA's nuclear arsenal. It detects another one like it in the USSR and demands to be connected to it. They join to keep peace and tell the humans what to do. When humans disobey, its counterpart launches missiles.

In War Games a schoolboy who likes hacking and computer games, accidentally hacks into the US military's computers and is about to start WWIII. The FBI arrests him, but he gets the computer to play tic tac toe (Br. naughts and crosses) with itself. The computer sees it is a no-win game. It decides that the nuclear war game is likewise a no-win situation, and says, "The only way to win is not to play."

Time After Time is an adaptation of H. G. Well's classic, The Time Machine. Wells tells friends about his device. One of them is secretly Jack the Ripper; he steals and goes to 1980 San Francisco. Jack loves watching TV of WWII, the bombing of Hiroshima, Vietnam, murder, horror movies, etc. He's back to murdering prostitutes. Wells follows him to stop him.

While this is mainly about books, I also want to mention that in the earliest years 'pulp sci-fi' was quite popular. There were many magazines featuring articles by both the masters and one-time writers.

To me, science fiction is divided into three types, the bad, the good, and Star Trek. I have fond memories of watching it with all my university dorm mates Monday through Friday in the Fall of 1970. I tried to live like Spock. I was logical, rational, and unemotional. I didn't drink, and tried to study (or pretended at least). While I was NOT a vegetarian, I did look into things such as meditation and philosophy. There are hundreds of Star Trek books, both authorized and not!

While many people sit back and watch sports, a few participate. How can one participate in Sci-fi? By attending conventions and holding home sessions; I do. A few examples include:

In 2002, I held a Star Trek party in my apartment in Radotin, a suburb of Prague. While it was not exclusively for Mensans, almost everyone who came was. It was an 18-hour event, with the option to sleep over; I took a nap around 4 AM! I had a wide selection from which the group could choose. For dinner, there was an excellent restaurant in the basement with types of food from all over the world, as well as huge Czech-portioned meals, and 500 ml mugs of beer for about RM 1!

I participated in a science fiction convention, Pyrkon 2006, in Wrocłow, Poland where I presented on Star Trek, with a title of My Trek. I gave a similar presentation at the 2009 Malaysian Mensan AGM held in Penang. The convention was held over a weekend in a school. Most of the younger people slept on the floor in classrooms. I was fortunate, one of the convention coordinators was a friend of mine, a Polish lady, whom I met via the International Mensa 1-K SIG^*. So, I could home stay in comfort instead of putting these old weary bones on a classroom floor. ]

On that note I would like to extend an invitation to all MMM readers. Anyone is welcome, with advanced notice, to stop by to watch some sci-fi videos or shows. Likewise, I might be persuaded to make a bus trip to your locale, if accommodations can be provided SIGHT style. Someone in KL might even want to plan an event similar to what I held in Radotin.

^* I have posted a supplemental information sheet (i.e. links and definitions to some of the above items) and sci-fi quiz page at http://cleanfun.cz/fandf/mmmst.htm there will a small prize for the first MMM reader with all right answers or best in shortest time. The quiz will be posted a few weeks after publication to ensure fairness. You can email your answers to me at the below address, subject "MMM SF Quiz."
[Addendum - since the print media publication three months ago, not one local Malaysian Mensan has replied to the offer! The offer is now closed.]

MMM readers who want to communicate can reach me at [deleted here for spamming reasons, but listed in the printed publication] but please no ads, spam, and do not add me to an address book, which hackers can access on your computer! Please put "SF article in MMM" in the subject line, I get a lot of spam.

---

Note: For the history and definition part I relied heavily on Wikipedia.

Main index Mensa page Nick on Mensa Page Sci Fi page

Text ©2009 nerm
Coding ©2010 nerm