Modern Sci-Fi - Other's Just Another Word For A Friend You Haven't Made Yet

[seriousfic]

I've been thinking and I think a lot of my problems with modern sci-fi stems from the apparent thought that the fear of the unknown would be better served if the unknown were... known. It's stopped being about bad guys you can actually boo and started being about "anti-heroes" who are at least as good as the protagonist, so you feel a sense of loss and diminishment when they die.

Well, fuck that.

I don't care about the Others' love lives or the Cylons' sex games or Darth Vader's failed marriage (hmmm... a lot of these seem to have to do with romance). I want my bad guys to be scary.

Comments

[galamb-borong.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings – sympathetic villains are almost by definition not scary, but scary, malevolent villains are frequently unbelievable. I prefer my "other" to be human-indifferent. It doesn't hate you, it just doesn't care.