…is it cool? Was it ever? It never seemed to be when I was a kid, but maybe that’s changed. Scalzi thinks that 2001 and The Matrix were cool, but Star Wars wasn’t. I might completely agree if I’d seen The Matrix, but not having done so, I’ll take his word for it. I do agree on his assessment of the other two.
Slightly off topic, I use the verb grok regularly (I did so at work just this week) and when I do so I wonder how many people grok it? And if so, how? No one has ever asked me what it means, which means that either they already know, or they think they already know, or they don’t want to admit that they don’t know.
And getting back on topic, and speaking of “cool,” it’s remarkable how well the word has held up for decades. A lot of other words (groovy, groty) come and go, but that one seems to have stood the test of time, and become classic slang. It’s also interesting how well the word is grokked by most people.
Scalzi’s definitions of “cool” are nothing I’ve ever encountered. In my experience, something is “cool” when it either creates enjoyment by appealing to the psyche in by dint of its novelty (or similar attribute), or when it is regarded favorably by “people who matter.”
In the first case, science fiction is cool to certain people. In the second, it has almost never been. “2001” wasn’t a staggeringly popular movie, but it probably was “cool” in both of the senses of the word as I understand it.
Most of what is classed as “science fiction” these days ranges from fantasy to sheer mysticism having nothing do do with science. This clouds the already cloudy issue of whether it’s cool…
Another slang term that seems to be here to stay: “OK.”
“if I’d seen The Matrix, but not having done so”
You didn’t miss anything, Rand. Even Keanu Reeves’ hotness didn’t make it make any sense. (And I’m pretty sure you don’t care about that. ;-p )
Another couple of hours of my life wasted….
I loved The Matrix. The sequels were total lemons, but the pacing and story of the first one don’t get old. Great movie. The only downside about seeing is now is that everyone who has made an action movie since then has stolen all the technology they developed for that film, so seeing it now that you’ve seen it before doesn’t have the same impact.
I saw The Matrix and kind of enjoyed it I guess — but not enough to want to see either of the sequels.
Seems that the slang meaning of “hot” has survived equally as well as “cool”. Perhaps monosyllable slang words have a leg up on the competition.
Grok came into the lingo via Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. It’s part of the ROM of Transterrestrial readers. We don’t have to grok grok.
Star Wars was pretty good. From the John Williams score to the story, effects, etc. The Empire Strikes back was even better. It went downhill from there (one word: Ewoks).
The Matrix was good. The sequels not so. I also liked Equilibrium.
2001 is too sedated for me. I tried to watch it like half a dozen times and always gave up at some point.
What about Aliens and The Terminator? Or Iron Man if you want a recent movie?
Which reminds me I still have not watched Gattaca.
When in highschool, I noticed there was a kind of “cool” reading list — books we read that weren’t assigned by our English teacher.
The biggies were The Tolkein Ring Trilogy, Dune (and sequels), Carlos Castenada’s Journey to Ixtalen, and if I remember correctly, Stranger in a Strange Land was on the list. As far as I could tell, the emphasis was on drugs, or if not explicitly drugs, altered states of consciousness.
I tried to read the article, couldn’t do it. I couldn’t care less about what is “cool” or not, and I haven’t for quite some time. The only question that should be asked about an artistic genre (which is what science fiction is, not a cult or a university course or a “cool” club) is “is it any good?”
PM, if I remember high school right, one of the biggest ‘must reads’ was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.
I also find all the previous posts interesting; I think any concept that creates a type of cultural shorthand, ie, Keanu Reeves associated with any scifi project, is the very definition of ‘cool. ‘ It sets the bar for an expectation that will be met and copied.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the word Grok spoken in a conversation. I’ve seen it a couple of times in print. (yes, I know its origin) If you use it, I think it’s mainly a sign that you aren’t cool.
If you use it, I think it’s mainly a sign that you aren’t cool.
I think that just means that you don’t hang out with cool people. It works for me.
Matrix is a fantastic film that is as creative as science-fiction films get. A great take on the “What if” question, and although the action is a bit over the top, it’s supposed to be and it doesn’t go too far.
Cool used to mean dispassionate. Now it means fashionable. Not sure when that happened. Sci-Fi was never cool under the former meaning. If it’s cool under the latter one, it’s due to Hollywood exploitation — I don’t recall Sci-Fi fans seeking the imprimatur of the monoculture.
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The Matrix was a good film (I actually liked the sequels, but in a purely self-indulgent manner – they were, by no means, “good” films), and it was good sci-fi right up to the point where Morpheus’s ignorant-of-thermodynamics speech ruins it all. Not that I expect the Wackowskis to be the next Cronenberg, but I could have hung with something like this:
Neo: Morpheus, why are the machines doing this?
Morpheus: (shrugs) Beats the frak outta me. Maybe if you pound the snot out of that Agent Smith, he might tell you.
*Later*
Neo: (pounds the snot out of Agent Smith) Now tell me what’s going on!
Smith: *laughs* Your “world”, Mr. Anderson, has always been a lie… *dies*
See what an improvement that is? It’s like I’ve written Jar-Jar Binks out of Episode I.
You didn’t grok the Matrix? Oh well, basically it’s just Dante’s brain in a box philosophical argument — with flip kicks.
Not Dante’s; Descartes, oops.
Not only flip kicks (you say that like it’s a bad thing…(?)) but also Campbellian monomythic blow-up-the-death-star GenX kill-your-Boomer-parents nice work kid, now lets grab some pizza and listen to some Nirvana whooo!
The normative sci-fi equivalent was, of course, Existenz, a must-see by any true fan of the genre. If you haven’t seen that one yet, you should call in sick and head down to the Blockbuster.
Plato’s cave with sunglasses. I thought the first film was decent–a bit overdone but better than expected–but the the sequels were awful.
I liked Gattaca, Godzilla. It’s got some good stuff for people who like manned spaceflight, too.
Gattaca was okay, but personally felt too much like a remake of The Reluctant Astronaut with Ethan Hawke reprising the Don Knotts role.
Years ago while watching a rerun of some old cop show on TV — set probably no later than the early ’70s, a strung-out hippie chick was being questioned by one of the detectives and she said, “I don’t grok that.”
Had I not already read Stranger I would have just put it down to weird hippie slang. As it was, I think in that context it was misused.
I guess I’m one of the few people on the planet who liked the entire “Matrix” trilogy, though the sequels admitedly didn’t live up to the standards of the first movie. I particularly liked Neo’s answer to Agent Smith’s Big Question at the end. “Because I choose to.” It nicely solidified the entire theme of the movies.
I haven’t heard or thought of the word “grok” in decades. I actually wrote a college paper on the deep meanings of the term (circa 1979, US Air Force Academy); that classic book was required reading in a literature class. The young Captain teaching the class probably thought he was being “cool” including “Stranger” in the reading list. I’m sure the paper has long since vanished, electronic storage not being available for the masses at the time. It would be fun to dust it off though…now that it’s cool to use the term. 😉
“PM, if I remember high school right, one of the biggest ‘must reads’ was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.”
Oh Goodness Gracious! Jonathan Livingson Seagull! Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember all of that. But I don’t think JLS was ever cool. Our English teachers saw to that by telling anyone who cared to hear about what brain-jelling pap that slim missive was. Not that it was cool to listen to Teacher, but if Teacher told you a book was Dumb with a capital “D”, it was not cool.
I guess the one thing I remember about it was I was politically active even as a pup, and my Big Sis gave me a satire book “Oh Henry!”, where the President of the United States was kidnapped by a terrorist Minnesotan (actually, the fictional state of Ceresota in the book), a stand-up comic was acting as a double to keep this grave crisis secret from the public, but the public was starting to see through the ruse, and the Secretary of State, who by outward appearances was a mild-mannered nebbish, was in actuallity a James Bond type who would fight the villian to get the President back, and would get his way with women by explaining the academic nuances of the Treaty of Westphalia in scholarly tones.
I guess it was funny at the time because Kissinger was single at the time and dating some movie actress who was a head taller than he, some date that was arranged by his patron Nelson Rockefeller or some such thing.
Anyway, the authors of “Oh Henry” had a blurb telling the reader to look for their other book “Jonathan Siegel Chicken”, but I don’t think they had another satire book with that title, but they were just cashing in on the JLS craze for another cheap joke.
Can we grok coolness? It has a half life like a fine restaurant that can fade away if the cult is too small or dissipate altogether for the early adopters if it becomes too popular. Skywalker’s earnestness was cool for the 6-10 year old set. Han Solo was cool, but Blake from Blake’s 7 was cooler except that his US cult was too small. Mad Max could be cool until the sequels and Mel Gibson’s celebrity made it uncool.
My hard sci-fi favorite is The Arrival. It had anti-coolness of MacGyver; the Robin-Hood nature of Star Wars, Blake’s 7 and Battlestar Galactica; and the love interest has more tension than some Han Solo/Fonzi-like image. Its rules don’t cheat physics and economics. It probably has too small a base to be popular enough to be cool and the sequel was definitely uncool.
Millenials seem to be using “tight” as a synonym for “cool.”
Well, I think science fiction is cool, but I think it died in its most recent reincarnation — it has had several, from Jules Verne to the “Golden Age” in the 1930s — in 1977, with the release of Star Wars. George Lucas killed science fiction, and replaced it with the fantasy sword ‘n’ sorcery uncritical thinking technofetish thingamadingus it is today, in which the logical consistency and scientific plausibility of the tale is of minor interest, or entirely dismissed, giving us The Day After Tomorrow, The Core, and, yes, The Matrix, stuff that relies on unlikely or flat-out impossible science and technology.
This is not to say that very entertaining stories have not been made. I was 14 when Star Wars came out, and I loved it. I liked The Matrix as well, and Blade Runner. These are arresting, absorbing, remarkable tales. But they’re not science fiction, because they’ve explicitly abandoned the rigorous requirement of the genre that everything be scientifically sound, so far as we presently know.
But that kind of stuff always did appeal to only a minority of gearheads. George Lucas’s genius (if such it be) was in realizing that you could eviscerate science fiction — remove the messy, problematic requirement of scientific realism, leaving only the techno wizardry skin — and write a much more exciting and fantastic (literally) tale. And thereby make much more money.
I don’t blame him, and I like lots of the stuff that has resulted from his deflowering of the genre. But I think the real hard-core stuff has mostly died off now, perhaps in response to our more mystical and less well educated (in the hard sciences) times. It will be reborn sometime, I am sure.
Post-Script: I guess I should emphasize, if it isn’t clear, that I think the very fact that science fiction has become mainstream is good evidence that is no longer real science fiction. It’s a zombie, something that looks like the real thing, but isn’t, inside.
Well Carl, hard Sci Fi still exists in book format (and at the “grassroots” level on teh intarwebz), it’s just dead wrt Hollywood. Shocking.