Sci-Fi

I was thinking about how much I like sci-fi earlier this afternoon when a spaceman came up to my door and put a letter through my letterbox. Actually on second thoughts it may have been a postman. But then I thought, why is a spaceman putting a postman through my letterbox and since when did postmen get so small?

Then the small postman started singing La Traviata. Is this space opera, I thought? For while I have always liked sci-fi I have never been that au fait with its terms and conditions.

Sci-fi, like masturbating your supposedly straight best friend into an old sock in the gazebo of his house after just having high tea with his lovely family, and your two god children! is something of a guilty pleasure. It is not something you talk of at the literary high table. Well I don’t, never being invited there. My tea is normally eaten at the £15 Ikea table in my kitchen on either my blue or red chair.

(In an aside and just to set the scene I have the football on behind me. It is Russia and Spain. One of the Russian players is called Jerkov. That can’t be right, can it?

Oi Jerkov, over here. On the head.)

(In another aside (for the scientists amongst you who have googled your way to this entry, does that make this blog a triangle?) have you all been following the release of the new Bond book? In my opinion asking Sebastian Faulks to write in the style of Fleming is a bit like getting Posh Spice to rework Beethoven. Anyway, I am sure he is laughing all the way to the French resistance.

‘Listen carefully, I shall say zis only once.’

For those of you who don’t know, that was a quote from Faulks’ book, Charlotte Grey.)
I’m just kidding. Perhaps Faulks, like Posh, has a handsome young footballer locked up in his cupboard. That would explain his jovial smile, wouldn’t it?

Asides aside I think I have been thinking about sci-fi for two reasons. The first is I read Damien Walter’s rather fine piece over on the Guardian website. And secondly I bought Star Trek Generations from the new iTunes movie service and watched it last night in my bed on my iPod.

I was excited. It was like seeing a digital watch for the first time. Mum and dad ran a pub and they took me downstairs to the bar one night. This chap was selling them. Wow, I thought. It tells the time! It doesn’t have hands!

We all watched the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on the tv together as a family. (I have all 5 radio series on CD now and listen to them often.) I liked Dr Who, Blake’s 7. I read George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Aldous Huxley and slightly older I found I liked a bit of Dick.

Who doesn’t?

When I was living in Australia I read Red, Green and Blue Mars. I think I’ve written about them before. My then boyfriend throwing Red Mars into the sea, travelling almost naked on a city bound bus.

But I wouldn’t say I was a sci-fi fan. Or more that I know what I’m talking about when I talk about it. I don’t know that I can talk about anything seriously. I’d like to be able to, but writing for me is a bit like running. It’s fast.

And I’m dumb. But I have passion and I care.

George Bernard Shaw said the saddest thing was to live and not to have a passion. Or maybe it was my neighbour who said the saddest thing was to have one of those donkeys you get from Spain in your window.

I get confused.

Currently reading - The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks

Currently listening to - The Best of Radiohead