The trial of a sci-fi freak

A story about fandom and the fans who totally miss the point

Photo by Ben Griffiths on Unsplash

Christina and I saw Dune while we were in Santa Barbara. I already wrote about that perilous trip, but for reasons of narrative economy, I omitted the incident at the movie theater. OK, “incident” is a tad strong. Encounter? Yeah, encounter sounds better.

Picture it: a movie theater. You remember movie theaters, right? They’re kind of like watching on your TV at home, except the screen is much bigger, the sound rocks, and the popcorn comes with an 8,563 percent markup. Also, there are strangers.

One of those strangers sat in the row just ahead of us. He was an older man with glasses. Wisps of gray hair poked out from under his red ball cap. Maybe he smiled, maybe we smiled, or maybe nobody smiled. I can’t say for sure because everyone was wearing a mask. But for some reason, the stranger struck up a conversation.

“Are you two sci-fi freaks?” he asked.

He could’ve gone with hello, but instead the stranger chose to check our genre bona fides right off the bat.

Maybe I didn’t like the way he said “freaks,” or maybe I didn’t like the cut of his jib, or maybe I figured Christina was the better bet, if he was looking to share his Dune fandom with another “spice freak.” But for some reason, one I’d later have to explain to Christina, I punted.

“She is.”

The stranger twisted around in his seat to get a better look at Christina.

“I love Dune,” she said. “I love the books—”

“Yeah, the books are great. I’ve read ‘em all. Have you read ‘em all?”

“The first three.”

“Gotta read ‘em all.”

“I totally love the David Lynch movie,” Christina offered. “I know some people don’t like it, but I love it.”

“Terrible. It was terrible. Even the director said so. It’s not Dune.”

Christina disagreed, but she saw no point in continuing the conversation. The stranger seemed like a mansplainer, and besides, he wasn’t the spice freak she was looking for. So, the conversation died down, but only for a moment.

“Have you read Heinlein?” the stranger asked me.

“Yeah.”

The stranger turned again in his seat to get a better look at me. Suddenly, we were talking. Well, maybe “talking” is a little strong. He was quizzing me to see if we belonged to the same tribe of “freaks.”

“What about Clarke?”

“Sure.”

“Asimov?”

“Uh-huh.”

He rattled off a few more authors. Then, satisfied that I had passed his sci-fi canon quiz, the stranger asked for my favorite sci-fi author. A dozen names came to mind, but I blurted out Neal Stephenson for some reason.

The stranger approved.

“What book?”

“Seveneves.”

He shook his head with disapproval. Was he one of those guys who refuses to read novels with female protagonists, I wondered? That could explain the Heinlein gambit.

“He wrote Snow Crash, you know.”

I knew.

“You read it?”

“Yeah, it’s really good, but the ending was a mess. Endings are hard.”

“What about Cryptonomicon?”

“Loved it.”

“Yeah, me too.”

OK, some common ground, I thought.

“I hated the Japanese for like two years. I just hated them.”

“Huh?”

“Because of the book. I hated them.”

What the fuck!? Did the stranger just say he hated the Japanese for two years because of a novel? Again, what the fuck!?

If this had been a movie, the handsome devil playing me would’ve asked the stranger what he meant by that. Was he speaking literally, or figuratively? If the former, tell him we don’t share his racist views. If the latter, urge him to think before speaking. Then ask the stranger how, in the ever-loving fuck, he so badly misunderstood a novel about World War 2 codebreakers and a ‘90s crypto startup with the long-term goal of distributing Holocaust survival guides to people at risk of genocide.

But this was a movie theater, not a movie. It took me a moment to process the stranger’s comment. In that moment, the conversation faded. And in the next moment, the lights dimmed and the previews began.

Unlike Christina, I’ve never read the Dune books. My only recollection of the original movie is how bummed I felt whenever Dune played on cable. It just wasn’t Star Wars. But I went to see the new version of Dune with an open mind and came away happy.

If you don’t know, Dune is about the feuding factions of a corrupt, dying empire that could’ve built a paradise, but instead decided to mine “spice,” a spaceship fuel with hallucinogenic properties. Dune has lots to say about colonialism, environmental exploitation, and the ways in which capitalism and militarism inevitably conspire against the human spirit. So… not topical at all. Dune is also a beautiful film with shades of Shakespearean epic, crisp dialogue, retro tech that’s sure to inspire fascinating conversations, and kickass action scenes.

A few weeks later, we had our friend, J, over for dinner. J, who is so cool his first name is only one letter, used to be our neighbor. When we were neighbors, we kept running tabs on each other, collected stray packages left by an inept postal carrier, regularly held court at a local coffeehouse, and shared takeout meals in our “comfortable clothes,” while talking about important stuff: J’s love life, books, and movies.

“Did you see Dune yet?” Christina asked.

J hadn’t seen Dune yet.

“You have to see it,” I said. “You’ll love it. The movie is great. Also, Javier Bardem, Jason Mamoa, Josh Brolin, and Oscar Isaac are all on the list.”

“Your list, or Christina’s list?” J asked.

“Both.”

“I can respect that. Just don’t tell me you fantasize about Timothée Chalamet,” J said.

“I fantasize about Timothée Chalamet.”

J wrinkled his nose in disapproval.

“If you’re comfortable, see Dune in the theater,” Christina suggested. “It’s totally worth it. Just make sure you don’t sit behind an old racist dude.”

“I told you, honey, I punted, and I’m sorry.”

“You totally left me hanging!”

Christina filled J in on the sci-fi “freak” who mansplained Dune to her, quizzed me about the sci-fi canon, then said he hated the Japanese.

“I thought Philip K. Dick was your favorite author,” J said.

“I love Dick!”

“Why didn’t you tell the stranger you love Dick?” J asked.

“Because I panicked. And I didn’t want to get into Dick. Not with that guy.”

“Bad Dick vibes?” J asked.

“Terrible Dick vibes. Just terrible. You don’t talk Dick with dicks like that.”

“What’s your favorite Dick book?” J asked.

“Well, I only do one Dick a year. More than one Dick is way too much Dick for me. This year, I read A Scanner Darkly. Easily his most personal novel. Moved me to tears.”

“But a slow start,” J said, “for me anyway.”

We agreed. Slow, but worth it. A Scanner Darkly is about the rise of the surveillance state, but it’s really about young people making awful mistakes and losing their minds. Once you get hip to that second theme, the story has all the feels, as the kids say.

“Last year, I read Ubik. Holy shit! Ubik changed how I think about death.”

“Really? I’ve gotta read it again,” J said. “I read it in high school. I was a kid, an idiot.”

“It’s very funny,” I said. “The first chapter is one big Dick joke.”

“I’ve seen Dune three times,” Christina said. “We saw it in Santa Barbara, then again in IMAX, and then I watched it on my phone.”

“I have to really love something to watch it on my phone,” J said.

“She’s a super fan,” I said. “I’m a regular fan.”

“What I just don’t understand is how that guy was even a fan?” Christina said. “Like, did he not understand the movie? Or, the whole concept of metaphors?”

“You mean a story set on a desert planet where pasty white people with airpower colonize brown people and steal their spice to fuel their spaceships,” J said.

“Totally—one hundred percent,” Christina said. “ I don’t even understand what movie he thought we were watching.”

“They don’t see it,” J said. “They watch Dune and they think it’s their story because they identify with Paul, even though the whole point is Paul’s people fucked up, and he’s this white savior trying to make amends. They watch Bladerunner and they think the future is cool because cars fly and there are sex droids, but they miss the fact that we nuked the planet and even the richest man on Earth probably has a fake dog. It’s all about them and their weird, bullshit fantasies.”

“But dudes like that get that spice is a metaphor for oil, right?” Christina asked. “Like I don’t think that guy was tripping the light fantastic, or whatever, on the spice trip of it all, but you know, he gets that it’s about… oil, war, the Middle East. Right!?”

At this point, I should share two things about J. First, the geek is strong with him. Very strong. I’ve seen J cosplay. He makes a very compelling X-wing pilot. Second, J is a Palestinian American who grew up on Long Island in the first decade of this millennium. Racists have been explaining geeky fandoms to J for years.

“Oh… he gets it,” J said. “He totally gets it.”

“He’s there for the world,” I said. “He digs the war stuff, and probably the mind control voice stuff too, because that’s super cool, but he doesn’t connect the brown people in the movie to the brown people in the real world.”

“Then why did you tell him to talk to me?” Christina asked.

“I didn’t know he was a racist at the time,” I said. “He was just an old guy looking for his seat.”

“But you got a vibe,” Christina said. “Yes? A vibe?”

I shrugged.

“Point of order, your honor,” Christina said. “I believe Michael said he had bad dick vibes. At the time, that seemed a throwaway line—and a cheap gag, if you ask me—but now that admission is about to payoff.”

“He got a vibe,” J ruled, banging an imaginary gavel. “She’s good.”

“And you are a sci-fi freak. We established that, yes?”

“In the parlance of that racist old man, sure.”

“Your honor, I move to declare me the winner. He’s the real sci-fi freak! He read all those authors, not me. I don’t read sci-fi. I read fantasy. Michael lied that day in the movie theater.”

“He did lie!” J said.

“I panic-lied.”

“That’s still a lie, Michael.”

“OK, you win. I fumbled on that one.”

“I thought you said you punted,” Christina said.

“Sorry, I mix my metaphors too.”