The choices we make, and the things we believe

I read a lot of science fiction when I was a teenager — I subscribed to Analog, a magazine of science fiction (with one factual science article in every issue). I drifted away from it while I was in college, in the 1980s, although a year or two ago I downloaded a current issue of Analog to my Kindle, just for old time’s sake, and my brother found some old ones at a yard sale and gave them to me.

Written science fiction is a whole different culture from TV and movies; fans of science fiction on the printed page tend to scorn the term “sci-fi” and prefer the term “SF.” They like stories or novels that are based on some aspect of real science, speculating about things that really could exist. I’m sure that a lot of “hard SF” fans enjoy movies and TV shows, just as I did, but they consider a lot of them to be fantasy dressed up in science fiction clothing.

“Star Wars” isn’t about any sort of real science or technology; it’s about “the Force,” which is, for all intents and purposes, metaphysical. (The much-derided prequels tried to put a pseudo-scientific spin on the Force by referring to “midichlorians,” which sounds vaguely scientific.) You could tell the basic story of “Star Wars” as a western, or a middle earth fantasy, or what have you. It’s not really about science or technology or encountering alien cultures.

That is not meant to be a knock on “Star Wars,” which I, personally, love dearly. I’m just trying to explain why readers of science fiction short stories and novels would…