The new Battlestar Galactica (not the old one) has won a Peabody Award, a well-deserved first for the Sci Fi Channel.

I think this is a good sign of the mainstreaming of this important genre of literature, for too long ghettoized, when it's becoming more and more relevant to the technological future rapidly closing in.

I get the impression that the show is only peripherally about spaceships and stuff, and rather intensely about the relationships among the people, like all good dramas. If you had to, you could set it in the old West and tell similar stories, it seems to me. From my heritage, it also feels a little like the escape from Egypt in Exodus. But there's no question that, barring a couple of clunkers, this current season has been remarkable.

Second best thing on TV, if you ask me.

Someone who thinks that SF is only about "spaceships and stuff" clearly doesn't read any.

Except if it were in the old west, I wouldn't watch it. :) It is my favorite show on TV (since Firefly stop playing on Sci-Fi).

Ian, that's precisely my point. And I suspect I've read as much SF as you have. Here's the test I use - if you remove the SF setting elements from the story and the story doesn't fall apart, it wasn't SF to begin with. Arguably, Galactica fails that test.

In the case of Galactica, the stuff that makes it SF-like and the stuff that makes it good are different.

And Dan, I totally agree with you - I probably wouldn't watch it if it were an oater either. I don't watch Deadwood even though everyone tells me it's great. And Firefly was outstanding.

Next on the list: Gene Wolfe for Nobel Prize in Literature.