Writing Science Fiction Scripts

The website screenplayscripts.com has published an interesting article on Writing SF Scripts by Nic Ransome.

Among many interesting points that it raises:

1. Film Genre vs Story Genre. Film theorists refer to the SF genre as portraying future or parallel worlds with a particular set of themes and tropes. Story theorists refer to genre as a setting, and not a genre per se. I think what Ransome is getting at is the difference between speculative SF, in which the SF is necessary for the story, and that part of SF in which a story told in a SF setting despite the fact that it could have been told in any other setting.
   
   As examples of the former, he cites Gattaca and Solaris, while of the latter he cites Star Wars (Hero's Journey in space) and Lost in Space (The Swiss Family Robinson in space). He describes Galaxy Quest as a "a fish-out-of-water ensemble comedy with a classic redemption arc for the lead protagonist ... set it in space" and also "one of the cleverest, funniest and most elegantly-structured Sci-Fi scripts of the past twenty years."
   
2. Utopia, Dystopia and Fantasy. According to Ransome, SF and Westerns are the only genre's to resist post modernism, which he attributes to the fact that:
   

   Sci-Fi so completely resists the post-modern relativity of time and meaning is because that is what it was always about in the first place. There are no realities or meanings more relative than those revealed by Science Fiction.
   
   In its purest form, the Sci-Fi narrative presents a polarity of moral choices and asks the most difficult of existential questions. This polarity is encapsulated by the utopian (ordered, no conflict, boring) and the dystopian (messy, intriguing, human).

   Here he gives the examples of Logan's Run, in which an apparently utopian world is revealed as dystopic, as well as Brazil and The Matrix as apparently normal worlds that turn out to be versions of hell.
   
   Fantasy arises when mythic stories are played out in a SF setting, such as Dune and Star Wars. He cites Chris Vogler as saying that Willow "is a perfect example of what happens when you try systematically to hit every beat of the Hero’s Journey without spin, skew or innovation."
3. Science Fact and Science Fiction. SF is naturally shaped by scientific advances. As examples, he cites:
   
1. state control through technology (1984, The Matrix)
2. cryogenics (Sleeper, Demolition Man)
3. cloning (Multiplicity, The 6th Day)
4. state control of fertility (The Handmaid's Tale, Supernova)
5. memory recording and exchange (Total Recall, Strange Days, Unforgettable)
6. cybernetics (Terminator, Bicentennial Man, A.I.).

He concludes with the following:

Sci-Fi is the arena in which we confront possible futures (and, indeed, alternate pasts) and explore how we could live in them.

Sci-Fi films continue to reflect advancements in science and our thinking about the consequences of ‘progress’, from films about computers developing consciousness and will (2001), to films about artificial intelligences developing souls (A.I.) and from a film in which a replicant thinks he is human (Blade Runner) to a film in which a human discovers he is a clone (The 6th Day).  

All in all, a fascinating perspective that I encourage you to go read in full. And some excellent suggestions for movies to check out. I need to go rewatch Galaxy Quest and The 6th Day. I don't recall ever having seen Sleeper.