For many of us, our introduction – or perhaps, immersion – in science fiction is a multi-generational experience.
George Mole wrote of it in his character analysis of Jack O’Neill throughout Stargate SG-1 and the experience was so strikingly similar to my own that I immediately reached out to him.
It was my late father who introduced me to Doctor Who, read me the unabridged Dracula and Lord of the Rings, and together we went on a journey through Farscape, Terry Pratchett, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Every Tuesday evening after BBC2’s regular 6 pm ‘cult slot’ I would pick up the phone and we’d dissect the most recent episode of whatever it was we had watched separately but together. Those conversations, which encompassed a breadth of lived experiences so incidentally, are still vital to me as fragments of advice and insight. Incomplete but incomparable – the Dad Sea Scrolls, if you like.
Even now something will pop into my head that in hindsight has become somehow meaningful and I know – in the grand scheme of things – I’m lucky to have that. There will always be regrets that I was too much of a child at 19 to have asked the important questions, but your parents needn’t have passed for you to be estranged from them, physically or emotionally. We are all to some extent pounding uselessly at the sheet of ice until our knuckles are bloodied. Desperate to break through, to understand, and be understood in turn.
