Skip to main content

Sci-Fi and Why I Know Too Much About It

I have a weird relationship with science fiction. I don't seek it out, and when I have, I'm usually not that interested in it (with stellar [hah! i pun] exceptions like Ender's Game and Fahrenheit 451, which should maybe count?).

But everyone's family influences them, and my dad is an aerospace engineer, and my older brothers are biochemists and motion graphic artists. And they all love sci-fi.

My dad was a teenager in the '50s, so the movie October Sky was basically him, minus the coal mining and father issues. So really 'was basically him' means 'he launched rockets with his friends.' In my parents' basement we have a wall lined with copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as novels by Asimov, Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Lately he's told me how much he loves Kurt Vonnegut (a lot, it seems).

My older brothers are six and four years older than I am, so I looked up to the oldest and hated the other growing up, but we stopped hitting each other with pillows whenever Star Trek: Next Generation aired. We for some reason (one of the only tvs was there maybe?) always watched it in my second oldest brother's room, and there was a ready supply of pillows. Just to let you know we COULD have been hitting each other.

So this has always been around me, and I have a decent amount of sci-fi knowledge that was picked up by osmosis. I remember almost zero actual plotlines of STNG, but I can tell you all the characters' names and most of the actors who played them (the opening titles are memorable). I haven't read Dune, because I tried and it was boring. I kind of hate Heinlein because of his polygamy thing, and I feel like Asimov has awesome ideas, but can't write. I haven't tried Clarke. The only one I really enjoy is Ray Bradbury.

Do families tend to have one genre define them? The only other one I can think of in my household is true crime. I grew up watching my mother read things like The Night Stalker, which I subsequently picked up. It probably warped my mind to some extent, but nah, everything's fine. My family's sci-fi grouping was seemingly predetermined by my father's interest being so overwhelming as to lead to his career. Is this the case with others, or how does a preferred genre have an impact on a family's bonding?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't...

Book Blogger Hop, Pt II

All right. The question for this week is:  "Do you read only one book at a time, or do you have several going at once?" Oh-ho my. I have an issue with book commitment. I start a new book, and it's exciting and fresh, and I get really jazzed about it, and then 20% of the way through, almost without fail, I start getting bored and want to start another book. I once had seven books going at the same time, because I kept getting bored and starting new ones. It's a sickness. Right now I'm being pretty good and working on The Monk , Northanger Abbey , Kissing the Witch , and I'm about to start Waiting for the Barbarians since my friend lent it to me. But The Monk and NA are basically books I only read when I'm at work, so I don't see it so much as working on four books, as having books in different locales. Yes. This entry wasn't as good as some of the others, but I shall rally on the morrow. Yes I shall.

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar...