Bad science fiction takes tropes like time travel, robots, spaceships, etc. and uses them as props in an otherwise non-science-fiction story. Basically, take a western (for example) and swap out the six guns for blasters, the horses for speeder bikes, the Injuns for Martians. While those can make entertaining enough stories, they’re not, by definition, “good science fiction.”
Truly good science fiction takes an idea for a technology or discovery that does not currently exist and examines what that piece of scientific advancement would do to the human condition. Such does not appear too often.
I just watched “Black Mirror: White Christmas” which was produced by the BBC. This was a surprisingly good hour and three quarters of *actual* science fiction. It comes in the form of three separate stories interwoven into a single narrative of two guys sitting in a cabin in a snowstorm trading stories. The science fiction comes from a piece of technology that does not currently exist, but is integral to the story and *drives* thinking about what it would do to people. In short, as some point in the near future, everyone has some form of implanted technology that allows:
- Enhanced vision
- Pseudo-telepathic communications
- The ability for other people to see through your eyes
- The ability for entire minds to be copied and simulated
- Real-time modification of what you see and hear
In the world shown, the technology is universal and wholly accepted, much like current cell phones. And as it turns out, some of the results of the use of this technology can be pretty damn horrifying.
Yikes.
It was awesome. In the usual British “everything is awful” sort of way.
It appears that this will run again on the “Audience” channel Saturday night.