Why James Bond Fans Are Better Than Sci-Fi Geeks
Bond fans are different. They (we) make an effort. When I was younger, I found that watching the Bond films and reading the books made me a more active and motivated person. I began to take an interest not just in playing video games but in learning new things. Online Bond forums are, by and large, not a bunch of nerds arguing over fantasy scenarios but guys talking about actual skills: effective martial arts to learn for self-defense, good clothing decisions, how to fix cars, elegant alcoholic drinks, card-playing tips, travel locations, etc. These are real skills that you can go out and learn and use. You can’t learn how to fly an X-wing, do flips with a lightsaber, or use the Vulcan neck thing to take out a mutant invader.
Sure, as a Bond fan I learned some of the more outlandish skills, such as how to pick handcuffs with a paperclip, but I also got off my ass and took up boxing, judo, military combatives, and foreign languages. I also took an interest in classic men’s clothing (though Steve McQueen beats any Bond any day of the week in this department). I still love Bond, though as I’ve aged (I’m a ripe old 27), he’s no longer my inspiration for learning new things. But he was my initial inspiration, as a younger lad, for striving to be a well rounded man.
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Thanks so much!
As you may know from one of my older posts here, I HATE Star Wars for exactly the reason you described.
See, I liked punk rock, so I copied the clothes and the attitude (and have retained the attitude.) Duh.
But people who are fanatical about something but DON’T use it to inspire/improve/change themselves in real life baffle me.
I’d merely get a kick out of devout football fans who are fat, useless couch potatoes IF I didn’t think that ultimately, America’s fanatical obsession with this game will prove to be part of its moral downfall (See “Paterno, Joe”)
I will give Star Trek people SOME credit. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_William_Shatner_Changed_the_World
But Star Wars is just a giant cynical $$$ marketing ploy based on an older and better Japanese film.
Like all idols, it provides its worshipers with the dangerous illusion that they are part of something noble and worthwhile, while sucking their souls dry.
I’m reminded of the idiot one of my cousins married, who was a chronically unemployed, obese adulterer (we learned later.) He was a Harley Davidson fanatic. He had what seemed like every piece of Harley memorabilia ever made (despite not having a steady job.)
At one Thanksgiving dinner, I asked him how much Harley was paying him to use his girthy self as a walking billboard. He didn’t get it.
Then I asked him if he’d ever added up all the money he’d wasted on Harley stuff and whether he could’ve just bought an actual motorcycle instead.
I’m serious: after all that, he didn’t own one.
Luckily, I’m not obliged to interact with these dingbats any longer.
You’re welcome! I think you’re right. People get so bent out of shape if you dare criticize Star Wars. “It’s art, dude. Like man, you just don’t understaaand, dude.” I get it: I think it’s enjoyable but the type of people who obsess over it, like the jackasses in the Clerks clip, drive me nuts. I realize I’m speaking purely based on my own experience and anecdotal evidence, but life experience must count for something. I’ve met hundreds of sci-fi geeks, and they all tend to turn out the same. So sue me if I don’t have a peer-reviewed study to back it up.
Missed you during my solo overnight on Agung Volcano and during the revolution in Tahrir Square. So we’ll agree to dispense with peer review and agree I’m right and you’re wrong.
Have you written about it? I’d sincerely like to read it.
I think it’s been pretty well established that you know as much about the language of film as a cat does about tuna fleets. Suffice it to say they are not pikture-books.
You’re so right! And so suitably droll, too! I wrote a thesis once on Stanley Kubrick’s cinematographic style in shooting The Shining. But then again, the “language of film” so seldom figures into informal, tongue-in-cheek blog posts about why one likes James Bond fans better than sci-fi ones–which is why I’m grateful when anonymous commenters mention it.
I was talking about Shaidle. She doesn’t like Star Wars cuz she is incapable of actually “seeing” it. Reduce it to a novel and sure, it’s nothing to write home about.
Well, sure. The value is Star Wars is the expansive universe it sets up so well in the original trilogy, in terms of a very simple and primordial story structure (follows Campbell’s monomyth quite closely), and the worlds and races and politics that offer many different avenues of interest – it’s a great place to escape into.
But there’s much better sci-fi out there in terms of story, technologies, philosophies, social commentary, etc.
ttk, that’s the point I’m trying to make. Star War’s excellence resides in its place in SF film and the language of film, not anywhere in SF literature. Reduce it to a novel and it might measure up to Brigands of the Moon by Ray Cummings from 1931. In it’s plot, Star Wars is ’20s SF literature, in it’s settings at the fringes, e.g. use of language, non-aerodynamic space craft, etc., it is somewhat more nuanced, ranging from the ’20s to the ’60s. It’s language aside from that is specifically filmic, mostly thanks to the great design work of Ralph McQuarrie. If Star Wars was made by the same people who made Logan’s Run, you barely would’ve heard of it.
Why do you consider playing cards superior to playing video games? I don’t see any reason to value one over the other, except that doing so makes James Bond fans appear superior to Star Wars fans.
I value them more because you’re playing with other people. You’re engaging them, feeling them out, developing a real strategy with other humans, not just playing a computer.
But video games are still great in their own respect.
I think there’s a reason why a great many of the most popular current video games are multiplayer games. There’s no substitute, even in virtual reality, for the exhilaration of competition and collaboration with real people — the primary difference is that between playing over a network and playing around a table.
Apparently Bond fans are also huge fans of knocking over ridiculous strawmen.
They also know seem to know absolutely nothing about actual Science Fiction since they only refer to Star Wars (a fantasy film) and “Comic-book geeks” in the article.
Niven, Heinlein, Dan Simmons, Alastair Reynolds, and the rest have written mind-expanding books.
And the military Sci-Fi writers – Drake, Ringo, Williamson, Weber, etc… have far more believable heroes than James Bond.
Gosh! I must be horribly confused. I love Bond, football, video games, Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books and I used to be an athlete before I developed chronic migraine and a bone spur in my neck.
Oh, I’m also female.
I also love cards. Well, games of all sorts.
Your analysis is incredibly shallow. Science Fiction is about ideas and all you’re really saying is that you lack both the intellectual curiosity to look past the visual and the math and science skills to consider the potential of the technology. Stick to James Bond, you’re not suited to the intellectual complexities of Science Fiction.
“Stick to James Bond, you’re not suited to the intellectual complexities of Science Fiction.”
I work as a professional science historian at a world-class research institution. So while I might not be suited for science fiction, I am suited for science reality.
Great. Then presumably you’ve run across this word called “inspiration.” Edgar Rice Burroughs has as much to do with bouncing Volvos off Mars from 60 ft. in the air as science itself does. Then there’s this semantic funny game where cocky is where a man puts a knife to my throat in a foreign country, takes my camera, and I take it back, as opposed to knowing judo and taking a dump in your pants. That would be called arrogance. I’m a life-long geek. A rather dangerous one.
We must meet sometime and compare horror stories. Ever been chased by four men through a ghetto yelling “get the white boy”? It’s pretty frightening, I can tell you. I’m only a semi-dangerous geek.
Trust me, I would’ve turned on them.
Well! It is possible to unlock handcuffs with a paperclip? In one the the scenes of “Person of Interest” the (extremely hot) hero does just that! And I passed it off as just a hollywood thing.
Thanks, Wargas.
Working as a “professional science historian” qualifies you to be a Luddite. You might be expert on what was, and might even be conversant on what is, but you clearly lack the imagination and creativity to envision what might be. It’s not Science Fact, it’s Science Fiction.
OK, let’s take Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Explain to me, in terms of molecular genetics, how that “might be” in the mystical future. Please make sure to explain how we would get from recombinant DNA as it exists now to creating dinosaurs in the future.
How are those time machines working out for ya?
Ah yes, the old “I can’t do it, therefore it can’t be done” combined with “I don’t understand it, therefore shut-up!”.
As I said, Science Fiction is about ideas, and you’re clearly not comfortable with ideas that haven’t been fully and completely vetted by the least among us. There’s nothing wrong with that, the overwhelming majority of mankind has nothing new to offer. The “you didn’t build that” resonates with them because they didn’t and couldn’t build it.
You may have some “book learning” and be able to plod from “step A, to B, to C… up to step F” but you can’t make the intuitive leap to “F” simply from seeing “A” and then construct all of the intervening steps. You have no creativity, no imagination, you’re fundamentally risk averse and you belong with the herd. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, the herd is a very important part of society but, sadly, Science Fiction is not “herd-stream”.
I’m sure you’re a busy guy so I’ll give you some time management advise… if you’re walking down the street and you hear somebody call “Hey, what’s the big idea!” then you can keep walking, they’re not talking to you.
Let’s take Clarke’s ride into orbit on a ‘Space Shuttle’ in “2001″ written in the 60′s, aerial combat in the 1907 “The War in the Air” by H. G. Wells or the radioactive bombs in his 1914 book “The World Set Free”. In 1938 Robert Heinlein wrote “For Us The Living,” which has a nationwide computer information network. There are hundreds of other examples.
Explain to me how any of that speculative nonsense could ever come true.
Sure thing, sonny.
You can’t really compare hard sci-fi to Star Wars; and of course saying _hard_ sci-fi automatically excludes all sci-fi movies except A Space Odyssey. (Or were there any others?)
Anyway if the main point was that “popular” literature deserves to be taken seriously, then I agree. For me, it was mostly detective stories.
I enjoy James Bond movies too, but I have tried the books and I could not get interested.
The Harry Potter books are good too. I read the last 3 this year, and they have a very insightful anti-statist subtext. Quite surprising, given that they were written by a supporter of the British Labour Party.
J.K. Rowling is one of the many, many creatives who are wise when they are writing and damn fools when they are talking, so to speak. E.g., Joss Whedon, Alison Lurie, and many more.
I know, but in the case of JK Rowling one really has to wonder how she could miss the obvious parallels between the world she created and the modern Western world.
I can’t help but notice that most physicists and astrophysicists directly credit one or more sci-fi authors with inspiring them. Which pretty much destroys a major thrust of the argument.
I guess, but how many actual physicists spend time vigorously debating Yoda vs Mace windu?
None – Because Star Wars barely qualifies as Sci-Fi. Entire college engineering courses have been dedicated to the design of Larry Niven’s Ringworld.
Good point. I might be guilty of a No True Scotsman when I say I was only talking about the most hardcore fans. The type who rip your head off if you even dare question their devotion to the genre or quibble over certain points. Have you gone on to some of those blogs? The ones that argue over Star Wars minutiae? It’s like walking into a death match. There’s a difference between *that* and reading sci fi for fun and enjoying it and even being inspired, as I am when I read Philip K. Dick or Ursula Le Guin.
Lessee.
I’m a hard core geek, and proud of it. I can rebuild an engine or a computer. I have built houses and written hundreds of thousands of words as a professional writer.
I can argue the minutiae of a dozen different subjects while cleaning a rack of motorcycle carburetors or dancing in any one of a half dozen different styles and am an avid outdoorsman as well.
I can name a few dozen geeks who are as accomplished or more so. You, sirrah, do not know half as much about geeks as you seem to think you do. I grow very weary of the authors here who seem to get off on telling us how much better they are than the average geek.
Frankly, I’d rather spend time with the geeks. The conversation is likely to be interesting and varied and they won’t spend their time telling me how much better they are than I am.
For someone who purports to know what he’s talking about, there’s an astonishing amount of nonsense in this little puff piece, starting with the title.
First, the title refers to “Sci-Fi Geeks”, but the descriptions are all of the saddest kind of nerd. Yes, there is a difference. Those who purport to write about geeks when they mean nerds are why geeks get really tired of the geek-baiting nonsense spewed forth by people who should know better.
Second, the utterly shallow “James Bond = sexy” theme running through here shows far less understanding than even a puff piece should demonstrate. A human clothes horse isn’t sexy, and man who works out to get a good body and buys fancy clothes is nothing but a human clothes horse. Good looking is a bonus for a competent man, but women with brains choose competence over looks.
Third, for a self-proclaimed science historian you appear to have no idea that you’re chronicling the work of a lot of SF geeks. Most of them even look normal. The biggest SF geek hangout I know has research scientists rubbing virtual shoulders with truck drivers – and on occasion the truck drivers correct the research scientists because the truck drivers are self-educated to a level that many college graduates will never see.
Fourth, you obviously never heard SF geeks in full flight – or if you did you’d glazed over in no time. SF geeks can shift effortlessly from the third scene of the fifth episode of an obscure SF show to the potential implications of the latest news in quantum physics, with reference to how the writers of the show could use the science to improve their plot.
Fantasizing over HotStuff Superspy is so childish beside a level of intellectual engagement that can synthesize across massively different domains and still not mind doing an ordinary day job.
“That’s a Smith and Wesson– and you’ve had your six” beats “Do or do not do, there is no try.”
“Science Historian?” You’re a writer at a lab. I’ve been doing analytical science in a lab longer than you’ve been alive, according to your bio. In comic strip terms, I’m one of the engineers in “Dilbert.” You are the equivalent of “Tina the brittle Tech Writer”
And your sophomoric attempt to generate attention by antagonizing the PJMedia readers is as pathetic as Shaidle’s was.
I am not impressed. Perhaps if you actually manage to lead a more accomplished life you’ll have something more interesting to write about than what movies you like or dislike. Fine trolling, little substance.
“You can’t learn how to… use the Vulcan neck thing to take out a mutant invader.”
You mean there is no such martial-arts technique that’ll really work?
Heh. What will the PJ lifestyle people attack next for hits?
Rock & Roll? Football? Come on, you are repeating yourselves. People will catch on that you are just trolling for hits.
I guess it depends on the Science Fiction one is drawn to. Go read some Robert Heinlein:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A. Heinlein
And I have taken Aral Vorkosiagan’s idea’s on honor and reputation as my own.
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That’s soul-destroying. The other way around in merely very, very irritating.”
Aral Vorkosigan, “A Civil Campaign” by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Have you read any of Ian Flemming’s James Bond books? When I was much younger I thought James Bond was cool and sophisticated. Then I grew up. Yeah, he’s still sophisticated. But there is no reason to tolerate a man that behaves so boorishly. What a jerk.
Kathy:
Do please understand that there is a vast difference between genuine science fiction, and mere space opera like Star Wars and Flash Gordon. The latter is mere juvenile wish-fulfilment; fairy-tales with rayguns and spaceships.
If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a show,
I should really just relax”
Hey, you can knock Star Wars all you want, but one thing you can’t do is convince me that James Bond films are worth one minute of my time.