To everyone, science fiction is basically just another type of made up story. Why? Because that’s what fiction is all about. What they don’t realize is that science fiction (sci-fi) is a much more intelligent and refined version of a fiction. We don’t even realize that most of the new technology now might’ve been a sci-fi back then. These things we have, a cell phone, a laptop, an ipad, etc. might have been just a dream that seemed impossible back then. Sci-fi movies and stories take these impossibilities and use it to show the world that it is possible but with it comes good and bad results. So now a question remains, what is science fiction? It is a fantasy that involves how science would affect society. A good science fiction should make you speculate and imagine, it should have a good story to it, and it should have the breakthrough because these are what makes the people interested and these allow them to be informed.
Science fiction should arouse the audience’s sense of wonder. It should get them to explore the possibilities in their mind, to make up their own solutions and make up their own scenarios. A good science fiction would make the audience imagine themselves in that type of situations. Arousing their sense of wonder means to make them think ahead of the story, make them question things about the story. For example, in the movie “matrix”, in the beginning Neo learns that he is “the one” but throughout the whole movie, he wonders what it means to be “the one”. While watching this movie, I couldn’t help but wonder myself, “what does it mean?” I also wondered what it would be like to live in a fake world, a programmed world. A way to know if a science fiction is really good is when the story bugs you, or provokes you into thinking “how would my life be if that really happened?” If a science fiction makes you ask these types of questions, then it has captured you and woke up your sense of wonder.
Science fiction needs what every story needs, a good plot. A good plot is the same as a good storyline. A good plot means that it would make sense to whoever would read or watch it. It leaves them wondering throughout the whole story and it makes them want to keep reading or watching. But a good plot would also leave them pondering after the story. Being suspenseful in a sci-fi is a must. It allows everything to build up and be surprising and be satisfying in the end. An example of a good plot is in the movie “Wall-e”; it starts off with a normal day as the robot named Wall-e. It shows how the earth looks like and what the little robot; left by itself is doing on the empty planet. The story starts to build up when another robot named “Eve” comes to the planet, obviously in search for something. Being a curious person, around this time of the movie, you’d be asking “where did she come from, what is she?” This is a good thing to have in a plot because to get people to keep watching, the story needs to make them get interested. In Wall-e the story starts to build up as the Wall-e finds himself in a ship in outer space, where the “Eve” came from. And the story continues on by showing what the ship is for, what Eve’s purpose was for going to earth. As the story builds up, it answers a few of the viewer’s questions but it would also make them ask even more questions until they find themselves getting to end and having their wonders be satisfied. A good sci-fi story builds up and adds twists and makes the viewer make their own conclusions.
Lastly, a science fiction’s main requirement is a breakthrough. A scientific breakthrough that is possible and the breakthrough that has its upsides and of course, its downsides. The breakthrough should take the story in unexpected and interesting directions. Science fiction takes a type of technology and advances it out of this world. A technology that seems impossible. In the movie “Minority Report” they have a technology that allows them to see who the killer is and who the victim is before it happens, it also allows them to see where and when this would happen. This is a big breakthrough that would save a lot of people’s lives. Not only will it save them, it will also put criminals in jail for even thinking about harming another. Although this breakthrough has good upsides, a good sci-fi would show all of the major possible consequences. The negative consequences in the “Minority Report” was that they would arrest the criminal minutes or even seconds before it happens, not knowing that criminal’s could change their mind right at the last minute. So they could be putting innocent people in jail. In this movie, they had some minor breakthroughs, like how their computer works, it runs on a big screen and you can use it just with the touch of your fingers, not only is this an easier technology, it is also helpful. A good sci-fi needs to have a big breakthrough that would affect the whole story.
