| Mar. 26th, 2008 12:26 pm Meditations on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Genre Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Waning Moon Saturn Retrograde Cloudy and warm A DAY, let me tell you . . . Found out the publisher for the time travel novella thingy is shutting down, so one less deadline to worry about. I’ll probably still write it sometime, but at least I don’t have to do it right now. Sent a few pages of the teleplay for my portfolio to an old contact from the days when I was active in that area; he loved it, said I should expand it to a two-parter, not a one episode stand-alone, because I was trying to cover too much ground in 47 minutes (which is how much script time a one hour show gets), and there was enough to make the core cast of the show shine and still have the guest roles really strong and complex. So I’m going to keep working on it. Reworked all of part one, and now have to figure out the top of part two, change a few things, and then get back on track for the rest of the material. Sent a few pages of the sci-fi horror western to a friend who loves the sci-fi horror genre. He was totally grossed out, in the best possible way, by my world of Freak Pretties and Skin Eaters, so I’m on the right track. Hey, I get squeamish writing it; good thing the reader gets squeamish, that’s the point. I got a good chunk of it done, and I can smell the end. Someone asked me, a few days ago, via email, why I’m veering so much into the science fiction/fantasy realm with writing, reading, viewing, etc. Well, there are several reasons for it, and I think it’s an interesting question. Currently, I think some of our best social commentary is being done in that genre. There’s a lot of material that has social, historical, and political relevance that falls under the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and there always has been. We spent a few years in the Femmebot phase, but we seem to be moving out of it into territory where gender, equality, and intelligence are factors in the storytelling, which I happen to think is a good thing. If you look in film and television work lately, where are the strong female characters? Not a whole lot out there in feature film land. Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett are doing pretty well, but there’s not much left for anyone else. In fact, one of the trades ran an article a few weeks ago about how movies with female leads aren’t being green-lighted because they don’t make enough money. There’s more room for genuinely strong, complex female (and male) characters in television, especially in science fiction and fantasy: Rachel Luttrell’s Teyla in Stargate Atlantis immediately comes to mind –in fact, most of the core female characters in that show are smart, resourceful, and interesting. I want to smack some of the guest stars upside the head sometimes, but that’s the way it goes in guest spots.
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