When I was a young lass, I thought scifi was really stupid. I was supposed to think scifi was stupid because I was cute and southern and dated boys who wore starched white shirts with khaki shorts. I probably would have been a cheerleader save for my fundamental clutziness (which is not NEARLY as adorable as Hollywood thinks it is). In short, in my youth, I tamped down my inner nerd.
And then I met my friend Maura who introduced me to the wonderful world of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Which I loved. By this point, I had tamped down my prediliction for boys in starched white shirts and had embraced my outer nerd to the point that I wanted a Star Fleet Academy bumper sticker for my car (Alas, I never got one... those dark days before the Internet. Also I didn't have a car).
Next month we'll finally come to the end of BSG, which is, in my limited experience, the best scifi I've yet encountered. Soon we'll all know that Helo is the 12th cylon (someone will have to buy me a coke if I'm right about that).
And then what will I do? I just finished Old Man's War and LOVED it. But I think I need a literary scifi mentor. Where do I go now? What will fill the gaping hole left behind by BSG? Whither the next intelligent, thought-provoking scifi for Megbon?
Really good scifi takes all your assumptions about the world you live in, turns them on their side and then makes you question all those assumptions. Which we should all do all the time anyway. What's out there that does all that AND spins a great yarn at the same time?
Is it Dune? Is it really? I went to that movie because Sting was in it. Are there better reasons?
