I wish sf felt more foreign. I wish it felt more like my attempt at learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphics did.

I know this isn’t practical. But at least steps in that direction could be.

Just watched the Star Wars: Rogue One trailer. First, I think it’s great that two Star Wars movies in a row have had female protagonists. It’s weird that some people see this as a “stunt” when they don’t say the same thing about a male protagonist in any film.

But back to the main point — the trailer didn’t at all feel like it was from a galaxy long ago or far away. Even accepting the humanoid morphology of the main characters, they felt culturally American/British. A Western in space — again. (Don’t get me wrong. I like Westerns in space. Firefly, the paragon of the genre, anyone? But we need more than that.)

Strange how nearly all sf contains characters with our mores, or even worse the mores of the 1950s, with similar clothes and hairstyles and ontological outlooks as contemporaneous people. I know why it is this way, philosophically speaking. But it no longer pleases me. It’s no longer enough for me.

I don’t think anyone makes the sf I’d most want to read or to watch. Maybe I’ll have to do it myself.