Sci-Fi and New Things

I was thinking today about what draws audiences to Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy genres in the media. After seeing G.I. Joe this weekend with my fiance, we had a discussion about it.

Notice: He disagrees with me what genre G.I. Joe should fit under and had some interesting points. But I'm not going to get into that. Just assume G.I. Joe is loosely related to Sci-Fi for this post.

To me, the draw of sci-fi is that someone else's imagination is at work and I get to experience it, adding it to my own collection of strange and weird ideas that have spawned from human nature. Even though Sci-Fi Fantasy worlds are often completely different than our own, I find I learn more about human nature and the real world from them than I do from realistic movies.

There's no way a sci-fi or fantasy genre can be completely unrelated to our own world, so I am mostly interested in seeing what is the same. Are heros still praised for their cowboy wrecklessness? Or is a villain still disdained for his disregard for human life and happiness? Is gravity still the same? Do birds still sing in those worlds? Why did the author wish to create his own world the way he did and what does it say about his/her view of the real world?

Seeing something new and amazing, something meant to drive hand-picked emotions through our hearts, is what interests me. The rush of something new. The excitement.

Speaking of something new, last night I was graced with the presence of a tiny baby bird in the cage of our two finches whom we had assumed were both female.

Despite having seen G.I. Joe this weekend, a very exciting movie, seeing that little tiny bird wave a struggling wing into the air was the better of the two.

Movies, books, audiobooks and the media go to great lengths to produce the emotions of awe and excitement in us. But the image of an Eiffel Tower crashing down making my seat vibrate, however cool that is, was surpassed by the little red scrawling thing in the nest. Plots must bloat themselves with dastardly and unexpected happenings to equal real life experiences.