Sci-fi is in the shit.

Thanks to a fantastic University elective led by lecturer Martin Patrick, I was allowed to analyze my personal comic work in depth and I gained insights into what it did. I became far more aware as to what my stories dealt with. It has helped me feel more confident and determined in my comics. One of these major insights was: sci-fi is in the shit.

I am a 20 year old male from a Western country. I have played quite a few video games. For most sci-fi, I am the target audience.

Over the course of my video gaming ‘career’ I have likely slaughtered over 1,000,000 aliens, monsters, beasts, whatever. I killed them. I shot them, vaporized them, chainsawed them, sniped them, burnt them, blew them up, skewered them, run them over, and punched them to death with giant metal hands. I killed them all until the game said I won.

I am not unique. Other gamers will have killed more. 2 million? 5 million? 20 million? I cannot say. However this puts generic sci-fi deeply in the shit. If I have seen aliens get shot and die a million times before, why will I give a shit for the million-and-first? Why spend money on a ticket for a movie where I get to see aliens number 1,000,001 – 1,000,051 die? I have watched my wise cracking American comrade die a thousand times. I have seen ‘platoon expendables’ corpses draped over steel barriers a thousand times. I have seen Dr Tits’ eyes light up in love and admiration when I decapitate my enemy, you guessed it, a thousand times. How can sci-fi possibly surprise me? What can it do to retain the interest of the thousands like me?

As I said, it’s in the shit.