Out Of My Head, Too... I dig science fiction. In all honesty, comic books probably first introduced me to science fiction, but TV, books and movies really took me into the outer limits. Yeah, I'll admit it, I was an avid follower of the original Star Trek, although by the time I was introduced to it, it was already in reruns on cable (now called "syndication") and heading for a successful run of theatrical movies and spin-offs that no one would have ever predicted when it was canceled in 1969. And when Star Wars came out, I was thrilled by the great space adventure and fantastic characters depicted there on the big screen. But as I grew older, I began to explore the more literary forms of science fiction, and learned how some of the old stalwarts of this field sometimes turned their noses up at what had become popular forms of sci fi, what they would call fantasy, and the sometimes confusing divisions imposed upon the form. Was "The Stand" science fiction, speculative fiction, or horror? And which section of the fiction section in the bookstore would I be able to find it in? And were these sometimes arbitrary divisions really necessary? Even without the sometimes turbulent infighting within the genre, science fiction has always been a somewhat annoying burr in the sides of more mainstream fiction (like Jackie Collins is considered high culture . . .). Even though we've had truly great thinkers who have brought tremendous ideas to the art form, like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and others, it still carried this stigma. For many years science fiction was looked down upon, lumped into the same category as trashy pulp novels and cheap horror mags. As a reader and casual writer, I found myself sometimes having to justify my choice of entertainment to those who felt I should direct my energies at something more serious, and ultimately, more acceptable. Nevertheless, I continued to eat up new stories of science fiction and slick visuals in magazines like Omni. I was intrigued by amazing stories of other worlds like Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," and Frank Herbert's "Dune," and I discovered many of the classics like "Brave New World" and "Fahrenheit 451" for the first time. You couldn't tell me that these weren't valid novels in their own right, no matter what genre you wanted to lump them into. The realm of science fiction even stirred in me a strong curiosity about the world of science, although I later found that my Elementary Physics text book made a better pillow than it did intriguing bed time reading. Yet, one of my most vivid experiences of the contemptible status attached to science fiction as a whole came in, of all places, an English composition class. A short story I'd written for an assignment earned me my first ever (and last, I might add) "C" in writing. After the shock of it wore off, I came to realize that the grade was almost entirely based upon the subject matter, because the professor didn't even consider science fiction worth her time, regardless of the merits or lack thereof of my story. Her shallow vision was verified when a flowery piece of formula bile I spewed out for the next assignment earned an astonishing A-, and a comment on how much my writing had improved! This little introduction into the thinking of the proponents of "mainstream fiction" did little to endear me to them. And it also inspired me to look back on an art form that I had years earlier turned my nose up at. Yes, I had abandoned comic books in my youth, because I had thought that they were too juvenile. But when I put that kind of biased thinking behind me, I found one thing that I had known all along was still true. I still liked comic books! They were fun! And they were entertaining, and thought provoking, and sometimes they even explored the realms of true science fiction. Sure there were some juvenile comic book stories, but there were many more where I realized the comic book writers were telling tales just as compelling and just as valid as those in other forms of fiction. Better yet, this kind had pictures! So I came full circle. And when Marvel introduced their line of 2099 comic books, taking some of my favorite characters and placing them in a futuristic world, I was in cosmic comic book heaven! And thanks to the 2099 UG, I still am! the space cadet, DS eic. July 29, 1999 Recommended reading: "Transmetropolitan" by Warren Ellis, for a somewhat dystopian, dysfunctional future; and Alan Moore's "Tom Strong", for the opposite view.

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