Once upon a time I took up science fiction writing in college. I took the course as an elective, while everyone scrambled to get slots for European Languages, Photography, Film and other savvy shiz, it was the only class that had no pre-rog, only 7 people on the list, and the prospect of knocking around departments for what felt like the thousandth time was not very attractive. I signed up right away.
The class was a real tight group --- of nerds talking elf and the whole fracking Star Wars franchise down to the spinoff comics, to the whole goddamn Marvel universe that they can crack wise-ass jokes about them like they exist in real life. The only time I got to actively participate was when we got to the part where we talked about two generations worth of the Bioman epic before it bred the Turbo Rangers and the Power Rangers and a whole lot of Rangers. And all the Japanese costumed heros like The Masked Rider, Shaider, Ultraman Tiga, Giga, etc. That actually marked the end of my childhood as I was programmed to be an adult after that-- meaning no more cartoons for me. No Kenshin, Sakura, One Piece, Recca, Ghostfighter and Dragon Ball Z. i simply did not exist as a child in that era. And up to this day I have my parents to blame that the only pokemons I know is Pikachu, Charmander, Meowth and Raichu. I look at people in cosplays and I sometimes wish I can recognize a character or two instead of poking fun at them walking around the mall holding some stupid bladed weapon made of cardboard.
So after a sem of discussing time travel, super-corporations and alternative universes, we wrote our own short stories as an output of what we learned. My classmates wrote about breeding people from embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting organs (awesome because her idea existed before The Island was produced), some war in space where we actually won and conquered other planets (before Avatar, which means UP students definitely are "the goods"), while I must have written the most implausible science fiction story that I cant even remember what it was about. I'm sure I wrote something about some fantastic Hobbit-like world that I could have picked up while I was dreaming.
Now, science fiction films outsells every film genre there is in Hollywood. It is most watched genre of all. The cinemas has to have a new science-fiction related movie every 3 Wednesdays. The highest grossing movie of all time is, guess what, a really special science fiction film named Avatar.
I should have paid more attention to the actual work being done at our science fiction writing class than oogling at our cool, smart professor. :D
