Relating to SF characters/world..

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cepwin

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I had a very interesting discussion with someone who is not a sci-fi reader last weekend about the fact the reason he doesn't care for Sci-fi is he can't relate to the characters, etc. It sort of surprised me because in my experience I can get as involved with well written characters in sci fi/fantasy as in any story. (Last night I was almost in tears reading one of the "memories" in the new "Lost Odyssey" game!) Has anyone else had non-sci fi readers say this?? Comments?
 
I've heard the same, especially from my sister. Personally, I find sf characters at least as believable as contemporary fiction.

I don't think people who say that have a problem with characters as such. They probably have a problem relating to the environment the characters live in.
 
i find that any well written character including sci-fi is can be related to because they are, after all, still people (MOST AT LEAST) and that many characters, such as the character Arctor in "a scanner darkly", can be related to with success because of their very human drives and problems.

people in any sci-fi story still have the same emotions and drives as everyone else.
 
You both have excellent points. I think too some people have a hard time relating to the non-human characters (cyborgs, aliens, etc.) However, a well written non-human character an easily be related to. For example, from anime, I am very able to relate to the cyborgs in "Ghost in the Shell" and from video games, I was also able to relate to the aliens in "Mass Effect." Both very well written stories.
 
This has a peculiar effect in relation to TV and movie sci-fi.

A lot of Star Trek fans pay attention to the careers of the actors in non-Trek roles. I have found in watching the interviews they do that the actors often don't seem to be nearly as interesting or smart as the characters they play. James T. Kirk is a much more likable person than William Shatner. It's hilarious. I have seen interviews of "Scotty" and "Uhurah" in real life complaining about Bill. This is to be expected since writers may spend hours figuring out what a character might say in a minute. A kind of intellectual compression occurs making the character seem really smart. But the same thing happens in books. Asimov admitted he took months to write a book I would read in a few hours.

Neo seems more interesting than Keanu Reeves also.

Sci-fi characters are significantly different from average people in the real world. I think that is why I like it. But this also relates to technology in the real world. I have talked to men who LOVE CARS but don't know a cam shaft from a crank shaft. I haven't been to an auto show in 30+ years and only buy the junk for transportation. So sci-fi is about what society does with technology but that is affected by how much people know about it.

psik
 
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Loan a book to your friend, don't tell him it's SF. Try Haruki Murakami's "Dance, Dance, Dance" and see if he notices the SFF. If he's more into classic lit, try Virginia Woolf's "Orlando."

If that's not his speed, give him Stephen King's "The Gunslinger" and don't mention that it's part of an SFF series. It's great as a stand alone.

If that's not his speed, watch "Donnie Darko". Or "Unbreakable." Or "I Am Legend." Even that Ashton Kutcher one, "The Butterfly Effect."

Or, just watch Lost. Or Battlestar Galactica. (The hot nude girls aught to at least get him interested, or the hot nude guys if that's his thing :D)

All of those are excellent character pieces in SF, IMHO.

There is a lot of SF with crap characters, and most of it's in the movies or on TV. Battlefield Earth (ugh), Superman (ugh), Star Wars (ugh)... but there's good stuff out there. Unfortunately, it's often the crap stuff that gets the big press.
 
Good points! Yes, I've heard that about Shatner. It's true, often the characters are exceptional but the actors are boring offstage. I guess that's one reason they become actors, to be someone different than themselves.

I haven't heard of the books, Fung Koo, you mentioned in the first two paragraphs but I have heard of the rest. Interesting, I usually think of Stephen King as horror, not SFF. I had also thought of "Ghost in the Shell" since they like cop dramas but I think the fact most of the cops are cyborgs and all the techno-speak might turn them off. (I think "Ghost in the Shell" is great.)
 
Have you read his Dark Tower series? Barely a stitch of horror in there. The universe (multiverse?) is held together by a network of beams constructed by some long forgotten ancients -- probably by us sometimes in the future -- and the Tower at the centre of all universes is crumbling. The lonely gunslinger with magic hands wanders the earth through doors to different universes gathering together his band of outlaws to fight the black magician who is trying to bring the Tower down. It's SF and fantasy at once, and altogether very cool and eminently readable. :D
 
I've got a little of a unique perspective on 'Bill' that has little or nothing to do with acting or Star Trek.

Several years ago, the son of one of his friends asked him to participate in a paintball scenario game. It was an attempt by the paintball industry to expand its appeal. Bill agreed and they played a pretty well attended game in Illinois - Federation vs Klingons vs Borg. Bill obviously captained the Federation team.

Interestingly enough, it was placed and timed to coincide with a Trek convention and heavily advertised to the trekkies (sorry, old, former TREKKIE - the new guys are the trekERS) but very few attended. So much for cross-over.

Anyhow, I interviewed Bill for one of the paintball magazines a couple of weeks after the event; we had a bit of history, since I'd gotten his autograph some 30 years earlier at one of the first ST conventions - a fact that I very puurposefully brought up at the beginning of the interview:

Me: Good morning
Bill: Good Morning. Give me a second to sit down, this Elf suit is difficult to manuever in.
Me: You're wearing an Elf suit?
Bill: Its for the Christmas, for the Today show. I just got off the set.
Me: Lol. I called to talk about the paintball scenario game, but first, I wanted to mention that you and I have a bit of history together.
Bill: Oh?
Me: (gleeful) yeah, about thirty years ago you were kind enough to autograph my program book and spent some time talking to me at one of the first Star Trek conventions...
Bill: groans and obviously winces. Well, I'm...
Me: You can relax, I'm not going to talk anymore about Star Trek
Bill: Okay...

I wanted to put him off guard a bit and succeeded. Following the opening, he was extremely talkative. The one major thing I took away from it all was that he was really and truly loving life - working on charities, scripts, books, acting, directing, producing (and hopefully not singing). I thought he was genuine and trying to make the most of the advantages that he had.
 
Most actors can be douche bags at times. Shatner's not so bad, especially when he's not taking himself seriously, like this.

:D
 
Great post! It's a pleasant surprise to see this side of him given the fact he's had a not great reputation. I think perhaps he's tired of always being tied to Trek. Another possibility, based on my experience meeting Colin Baker (Dr Who #6), is that he has is "on stage" persona that is not the same as who he is one-on-one. Mr. Baker often plays brash,type characters but seemed much quieter (for lack of a better word) when I had the opportunity to speak with him 1-to-1 briefly. (However, he does have a very good reputation among Who fans...very likable guy.)

RimWorlder said:
I wanted to put him off guard a bit and succeeded. Following the opening, he was extremely talkative. The one major thing I took away from it all was that he was really and truly loving life - working on charities, scripts, books, acting, directing, producing (and hopefully not singing). I thought he was genuine and trying to make the most of the advantages that he had.
Click to expand...
 
i find that video game characters can be related to also. characters such as shepard in mass effect who are human and yet are the tip of change in the futre where aliens are the pinacle of technology and advancement.

Also characters such as nero in DMC4 who are distraught through loss or death and yet still manage to get on with life..
 
In the real world lots of science and engineering types are kind of nerdy but sci-fi has often had suave debonair scientific geniuses. Is that why nerdy kids have read sci-fi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-rHqziA7M

But Stargate Atlantis has given us McKay. :D

Any guy that can blow up an entire solar system has got to be WAY COOL.

Atlantis is great because of the hilarious nerds/mundanes social interaction with McKay, Zelenka and Sheppard and the rest. In one episode Lt. Ford talked about people like him beating up nerds in high school. It is a kind of realism made funny that I don't recall ever seeing in any sci-fi show before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B99EbRl3Etc

psik
 
nerds doing cool things has become pretty cliche over the years: sliders, librarian, national treasure, etc.

The original Flash Gordon got it right: nerds belong in the back room, inventing really cool stuff for the HERO to use. lol.

Interesting personal perspective here. I got involved with paintball very deeply (about 25 years worth) because it was one-step closer to 'doing', rather than enjoying things vicariously. I attending a gaming/sf/f convention in, oh, I think it was 85 or 86, when a bunch of us were going out to play paintball and decided to hit the con and see if anyone else wanted to go. Nope.

Many years later, we did a '24 hour scenario game', featuring Bill Shatner as Commander Kirk, generalling the fed troops versus klingons and borg. Part of the marketing program was to hold it close to (and advertise it very heavily at) an ST con, in the hopes of generating cross-over between the two special interests. Based on my prior experience of trying to do that, I predicted that there would be little or no attendance from the ST crowd - and sadly I was very right.

Seems that most fans (nerds - and I don't mean that in a deragatory way) want the vicarious thrill, but not the direct thrill.
 
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The Librarian - a made for tv movie - and has had a sequel so far. I liked the premise - he ends up being the keeper of the (secret) library of Alexandria (I think); like most made for tv merde, the acting was atrocious and I could only handle about 15 minutes of it...
 
psikeyhackr said:
Here is a way to identify with sci-fi characters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA6JVbHiB5k
Click to expand...



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unless someone has already done it, now I have to go and count how many red-shirts were eliminated on ST:TOS...
 
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