Sci-fi and fantasy have become the new cool. From The Hunger Games or the True Blood/Sookie Stackhouse series, to the rise of the geek chic t-shirt and sold-out Comic Cons, the celebration of sci-fi and fantasy has spread across the media mainstream.

Recent blockbusters did the trick

Stephanie: I celebrate this change, because it makes large parts of me feel accepted and celebrated by society.

When I was growing up I loved The Lord of the Rings, Susan Cooper novels, and the Artemis Fowl series. But I loved them in secret, because they were socially unacceptable books—ok for children, but not for young teenagers or adults.

Even my cousin, a massive Star Trek fan, had no idea how much I loved Next Generation and DS9 because, to be frank, people who admitted it in the 90s were classed as weirdos.

Jia Jia: So what’s prompted this change?

I’d say that three mega movie franchises seem to have helped the cause: The Matrix (first film in 1999), Harry Potter (first film in 2001) and The Lord of the Rings (first film in 2001).

There was also a massive comic book revival starting with X-men (first film in 2000) and Spiderman (first film in 2002).

Stephanie: Definitely, and Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings brought fantasy to the mainstream. It started with the Harry Potter books. The series accompanied the coming of age of an entire generation of Millennials across the globe. We read the first books as children and the last ones as adults. Harry Potter wasn’t a children’s fantasy book; it was THE book. Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings films proved that you could make massive amounts of money off of fantasy in general, not just one franchise.

Hang on, sci-fi and fantasy actually go way back

Jia Jia: Perhaps cultural interest in sci-fi and fantasy is cyclical.

Fantasy became popular through collections of fairy tales in the nineteenth century and then again through Disney’s animations.

From the early twentieth century onwards, more involved stories started evolving fairytales into fantasy—The Wizard of Oz,  The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia etc. LOTR particularly became highly influential during the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, since it harkens back to a more nature-oriented and spiritual world. I mean, even Led Zeppelin wrote several songs with reference to LOTR (“Ramble On“, “The Battle of Evermore“, “Over the Hills and Far Away“, and “Misty Mountain Hop“).

As for sci-fi, the modern incarnation probably had its seed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, itself a fusion of sci-fi and gothic romance. Then there were Jules Verne‘s vigorous adventure stories from the 1860s and H.G. Wells‘ angst over evolution and what it means to be human in the late 1890s. After the Great War, we had the escapism of Flash Gordon in the 1930s, which was then turbocharged and commodified in the post-war prosperity of the 50s with Marvel and D.C. Comics.

Sci-fi was mainstreamed into the era of the Cold War and space exploration, with Asimov, films like Forbidden Planet, and Star Trek. As LOTR became cool with Vietnam and hippie-dom, sci-fi seemed to wane. That is, until Star Wars.

But Hollywood swung towards summer blockbusters and sci-fi gravitated toward a niche genre where it languished until The Matrix in 1999. That film made sci-fi cool again: thought-provoking and way sexier than your average action thriller. I remember people queuing around the block to watch the Matrix Reloaded, quite a feat In the cynical age of 2003.

The (successful) geek factor

Monica: Within the larger cultural context, I think we can also point the finger at Google and Facebook. They’re the first generation of new tech giants who made college geek culture the source of mega profits.

At college, less than a decade ago, the comp-sci majors were all about Digg and Reddit. Now these have become mainstream.

Stephanie: It’s been really interesting to see how the public’s depiction of IT figures has morphed from that of uncool super-geek in the late 80s- 90’s (Bill Gates) to super cool, geeky and successful in the 00’s, with the likes of Steve Jobs.

Microsoft was all about business but Apple managed to market itself as a lifestyle brand that was design and tech at the same time.

Jia Jia: And don’t forget Google’s motto of not doing evil. Sci-fi geeks have gone from social recluses to self-styled champions of an enlightened social vision.

 The Internet—a helping hand

Stephanie: In general, the internet has had a huge hand in normalizing niche interests and making them bigger—which can be a problem with deviant behavior like child pornography, but has been a blessing for sci-fi communities that want to come together and re-create their worlds.

Monica: I still think that more recognition is owed to fan communities. They tirelessly promote a franchise online and off, extending the world in question with new stories and alternative interpretations (see item 9 in the “Bring Back” section of A New Hope for Star Wars?), cementing loyalty among fan communities, and recruiting new fans.

Yet mainstream media continues to ridicule fans. Even as big publications publish more stories on fandom, the tone is one of “gosh fans are weird,” e.g. “10 Mystifying Examples of ‘Erotic’ Fan Fiction.”

Female fans are particularly boxed within negative stereotypes. A quick Google search shows that words such as “overweight,” “single,” and “divorced” crop up frequently in characterizing women fantasy fans.

An emerging tension—”Are you a real fan?”

Stephanie: I’m also ticked off by the opposite: when “true fans” accuse other people of jumping on the bandwagon and not being real fans. The whole point about our fan-verse is that it should be welcoming to those who are discovering the genre now. A lot of sci-fi/fantasy geeks spent a lot of time being called losers or weirdos and we, above all else, should know better than to treat others this way.

Jia Jia: I’m sometimes guilty of this, mainly because I get so frustrated when people love bad or average sci-fi or fantasy and try to convince me that it’s good.

Friends who don’t usually read fantasy kept telling me that Game of Thrones was well-written. The story’s excellent, but the prose is merely ok. Writers like Ursula Le Guin or Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, write great stories, beautifully.

Stephanie: I have a similar issue with the Twilight series and The Hunger Games. The problem is that they are just not good! It also makes me sad to see books that admire (I’m looking at you Twilight) weak depictions of women, and sick and hyperbolic—and frankly dangerous—fantasies of love. At least in The Hunger Games Katniss is a strong individual, but both are still poorly-written books, compared to a world like Phillip Pullman’s.

 What next?

Monica: Some people worry that we are the “kidult” generation, eschewing responsibility and adulthood and loving comic books and things that infantilize us.

Stephanie: I say we are a more tolerant society. And also more honest.

People have always been interested in stuff outside the mainstream. We just used to keep fairly quiet about it for fear of being labeled “weird.”

Now it turns out that everyone’s “weird” because everyone has an imagination and wants to play with ideas and worlds.

Jia Jia: I’ve always loved sci-fi and fantasy as genres that can take you places where you don’t have the means to go or are afraid to go.

What separates man from machine—Bladerunner? Where will evolution lead—Time Machine? What happens if gender could be switched—Left Hand of Darkness? How do civilizations rise and fall—The Lord of the Rings?

At one time or other, these big questions have been the subject of mainstream social debate. I hope they’re becoming the focus once more.