This is one of the reasons why I love the BBC: it takes science fiction seriously. I’m not just talking about the awesome entertainment the Beeb has given us over the years, like Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 and The Tripods. I’m talking about its new multimedia project My Science Fiction Life, which is looking at the impact that SF -- books, comics, movies, TV, and more -- have had in Britain, on ordinary people, on artists and scientists, on society as a whole. The site invites readers to contribute their own memories of growing up with SF and what SF means to them today. You don’t have to be from the U.K. to contribute, but when the site closes to contributions later this month and organizes itself as an archive, the focus will be on the experence of SF in Britain.
The site is smart enough to stretch the idea of what constitutes SF to just the right degree -- it includes, for instance, the 1984 British TV film Threads, which scared the crap out of me as a teenager, though arguably the film is merely speculative, since all-out nuclear war is not really a science-fictional concept like, oh, warp drive or time travel. In fact, the site says:
We're hoping that the debate about what constitutes science fiction, fantasy and horror, and where they intermingle, will be a lively aspect of the site. We're not here to tell people where the boundaries lie between genres.
Cool.
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