The geekdom of Sci-fi

Or, I was a hipster before there were hipsters

One of the nicest things about growing old is the satisfaction I get from looking at my grandchildren and their friends and saying, “You kids today don’t realize how lucky you are. Back in my day, we didn’t have Ipods or IPads or MTV or YouTube. No, we had to take drugs and go to concerts!”

But as Arlo Guthrie famously said, “That’s not what I come to talk to you about.”

Winter 1966, San Antonio, Texas. I’m 16, and I didn’t fit in anywhere. That’s why I usually spent my after-school hours in the base library on Brooks Air Field, getting lost in so many different worlds.

The word geek had a different, darker, meaning back then. It meant the scarey inhabitants of carnival and circus freak shows. Or I suppose in our world of politically correct euphemisms, we’d call them “sideshows.”

Anyway, what do you call a 16 year old kid who’s into Sci-fi (although back then it was “Science Fiction”) in 1966?

I’m sure that a lot of my friends in those days would have said, “Queer,” a title that would have been tantamount to a social death sentence, but one which I embrace with pride and honor today.

But that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is how, once I had gone through the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes, I asked if there were any other authors like Conan Doyle. She led me to the shelves and showed a few books by Jules Verne. I settled on one title, “An Antarctic Mystery.”

It was in an anthology of Verne’s stories, and after I read it I continued with the other stories. They intrigued me so much that I eventually discivered — and read — “Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea.”

From then on, I was addicted.

My thoughts could be graphed like lightning bolts

My ADHD-addled brain makes weird connections. From Sci-fi, I moved onto action and adventure, which introduced me to Martin Caidan who, interestingly enough, wrote an actual Sci-fi novel based on flying. This was years before anyone dreamed of developing his “Cyborg” into a hit television series called “The Six-Million Dollar Man.”

From there it was back to the classics. After reading (devouring? inhaling?) Verne, it was on to H. Rider Haggard and his chronicles of “She.” Interestingly enough, Mr. Rumpole (of the Bailey) used her formal title — She Who Must be Obeyed — to refer to his wife in the PBS television series.

(There’s that ADHD again, making connections so fast I almost can’t keep up.)

Over the years my love affair with science fiction only grew stronger. One of the best developments to the genre was the switch from “Science Fiction” to the more inclusive “Sci-fi,” reflecting the new trend of stories like The Hobbit, which were works of fantasy, but not like other fantasies (Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, etc.)

Then, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke launched what was to become the Grandmother of All Sci-fi Movies.

2001: A Space Odyssey might seem a bit outdated today, but in 1968 it truly was a groundbreaking production. Suddenly, Sci-Fi had hit the big time. Instead of the 1950s grade-B offerings we were used to, with aliens being depicted wearing gorilla costumes with fishbowls over their heads and topped off with colanders, or huge radioactive blobs of chewing gum oozing their way down the streets of Any town USA until defeated by a young Steve McQueen, we now had REAL SCIENCE!

And it caught on. Oh, not right away. It took a few more years before George Lucas produced American Graffiti (with a young Harrison Ford) in order to finance his Star Wars vision. Finally we had a Sci-Fi production that was more than just cops and robbers in space.

I loved Star Wars — right up to the point when Lucas abandoned plot and characters in favor of special effects. Sure, we love candy, but too much of it becomes cloying.

And don’t get me started on how Disney has taken an epic tale of good vs. evil on an intergalactic scale and reduced it to the boring story of one family. After all these years of progress, we’re reduced to the Sci-Fi version of Dallas.