BW Media Spotlight

In the webcomic Moon Freight 3, which sadly is no longer available complete online and I don’t think is still in print (leaving me short the final volume), a cargo inspector and his robot companion inspect cargo going between worlds. At least until his sister invents faster than light travel and he’s out of work. The theme of the comedy strip is just an average person living in the future, seeing how what’s science fiction and amazing to us is no more amazing to him than our microwave or cellphones…and they didn’t even have smartphones when the comic began.

I remember hearing an old Buck Rogers radio drama where Buck and Wilma were all excited about how fast their travel tube was taking them, but I wasn’t convinced it was anything new in their world. It should be like us getting in a car and noting it’s faster than a bicycle. Meanwhile in the Superman radio drama’s first episode, Lara notes how easy it is to visit her neighbor with one leap, since the source of Kal-El’s strength and leaping came from his biology and not a yellow sun. It was an error because the point was Earth’s lighter gravity allowed Superman to “leap tall buildings” back then, but for her it was a simple explanation of something Jor-El would tell her Earthings can’t do. For them the fantastic was just normal.

That’s not what we’re talking about here.

I’ve begun to see that in various ways, the fantastical worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and even the action dramas we loved in the 1970s and 1980s that were so wild and interesting are getting grounded in things like “reality” and “seeing yourself”. While I have nothing against grounded stories or any representation that isn’t just clueless stereotypes and lack of believing in yourself because of  “the Man” keeping you down, and there are plenty I enjoy, it shouldn’t replace the more exciting and imaginative worlds that also entertain or could be used to speak on real world issues. Unfortunately, those worlds are now in the hands of people with limited imaginations and the results are actually kind of boring.

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