Is Science Fiction Important?

Wanda and I just sent off a grant last week- besides being in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign, we are always looking for other outlets for funding! But in the world of documentary grant writing, there is a question that's almost always asked: Why your film is an important film to make? What is this urgent issue that needs to be discussed right now?

I’ve struggled with the idea of why this documentary is “important”- because let’s be honest- time travel (and science fiction while we’re at it) is a “fun” topic to think about. You can lump it in as “fancifiul” or not rigorous in thought compared to more pressing issues like global warming, political dilemmas etc.

But ultimately, science fiction has value because it promotes an interest in science. 

Stephen Shankland/CNET

I got to see Neil Degrasse Tyson talk in Seattle earlier this month. He brought up this valid point about how talking about science and science fiction can really help make science a cultural priority, which in turn, inspires us to make technological advancements.

Tyson believes that investing in science and education can strengthen a country; and the fact that the U.S. was one of the most prominent countries in the 20th century had a direct correlation to the scientific push that came during World War II. He believes that nowadays, the U.S. is hopelessly falling behind Europe, China, and other developing countries.

Of course there's a debate going on in the U.S. over what subjects should be taught the most, but teaching more science doesn't have to mean teaching less art or philosophy. The beauty of science fiction is that it touches on all these things.

I get that science and science fiction are two completely different things- but if you look at the advances in science and technology, they are often preceded by descriptions in works of science fiction books and movies. And we shouldn't forget that! 

It lets us reflect upon our history, it allows us to take a step back and examine cultural issues from today, and it makes us think about the future. So yes, maybe time travel isn't important, but science fiction and bringing up ideas in science fiction, is. I'm going to leave you with a sappy, inspirational quote now from my man Leonardo: 

If you haven't check it out yet, we're still in the middle of our Kickstarter campaign! You can check it out here. http://kck.st/1uUvoOk 

Your Weird Time-Traveling Boyfriend: A Series

Things I learn from films: virtually all time travelers are fellas, and most of them want to “make it right” with a woman, without telling her there was universe-altering involved because eh. DUDES STOP MAKING IT WORSE! LADIES STOP DATING THESE MEN!

- Gil Pender, Midnight in Paris

"I'm cheating on you with Ernest Hemingway. But only in this time period; tomorrow I'm cheating on you with Lea Seydoux. I'm a novelist but I can’t manage an explanation of time travel to anyone. BLOORGGG WHY CAN’T I ARTICULATE?"

- Sean Fentress, Source Code

"If you had seconds to live, you'd kiss me, right? I hope yes because I’m kissing you now. Not because we're about to die, even though we are. I'm NOT undermining your agency, the time loop is. Wait, we didn't die. Shit."

- Jack Starks, The Jacket

"Just gonna loiter here by this diner until you invite me to stay with you…don’t be scared, we actually know each other. It was a long time ago. Remember? We both knew there was a spark but you were a child. Then I died sometime in the future. What? I didn’t make things complicated, you did."

- Joe who won't tell you his last name, Looper

"This older me is coming for your son, which isn't abusive because he's not me, he's who I once was, shut up! Btw the loop being open doesn’t make this any less of a one-night stand. And it's cool that older me is Bruce Willis and I’m going to take credit for that."

- David Herdeg, The Philadelphia Experiment

"Cancel your plans, I just stole your car from the diner!" (Side note: what is with time traveling dudes and diners? You worked so hard to get here and now your first destination is Denny's? Stop coming here! You have nothing to gain.)

- James Cole, 12 Monkeys

"yeah i kno it was messed up when he took you hostage in your car

ill just knock u out and put u in the trunk so u don’t remember"

- Marty McFly, Back to the Future Part II

"Fine, you can get in the car...just stay in the car. The future isn’t for ladies’ eyes. Be mad if you want to be mad; Doc just roofied you anyway so why are we still talking about this?"

- Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact 

"You can’t have me."

Why Make This Documentary?

It’s been a couple of years working on this documentary, and almost always the question I get from my interviewees, friends, or anyone I talk to about the film is “So…why are you making a documentary about time travel?”

Calvin and Hobbes

I guess it goes all the way back to when I was a kid. Being a child of the 90’s, some of my favorite books—Harry Potter, A Wrinkle in Time—featured trips through history. I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, and my favorite parts were when Calvin and Hobbes got into their cardboard box time machine to visit dinosaurs.

La Jetée (Chris Marker 1962)

But I didn’t really become absorbed with the idea of time travel until, halfway through film school, I saw what would become my favorite film of all time. La Jetée (1962) is a 30 minute featurette directed by Chris Marker. Comprised of a series of black and white stills with narration, it tells a post apocalyptic story of a man being sent to different eras in order to rescue the present, and an image engrained in his mind, a memory when he was a child, that haunts him.

Time travel was something that was a fun, adventurous thing in books and movies, but Chris Marker’s version brought up ideas that were just mind blowing to me- bringing up ideas of time, memory and mortality in beautiful, stark imagery- and I was drawn to the whole idea of time and time travel.

Doing a documentary on time travel was the perfect excuse to jump wholeheartedly into a topic.

Originally, I wanted this film to pit the physicists studying time travel—the “realists”—against the “fanatics” who thought time travel was possible. My main question was: who was right? But then I realized a couple things.

• Documentaries exploring whether time travel is possible are already out there, like Stephen Hawking’s Universe, or Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. 

• There are a lot—and I mean a lot—of time travel conspiracies [I refer to this academic paper on the subject: http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7128]. And I didn’t want this film to be about conspiracies either.

What really inspired me when I was researching time travel was how far back the idea of time travel has spanned, and what that meant: Eons before H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, there were stories about time travel, although they don’t appear like the stories we see today, spanning across all cultures and myths. Humans are fascinated with time travel and it’s not just limited to a genre in fiction.

Urashima Taro

Mahabharata

A lot of people also ask if this is going to be a “nerdy documentary” about Star Trek and Back to the Future…to which the answer is yes, and no. I’m a nerd, for sure—but since time travel can be found everywhere from the Bible to video games to Afrofuturist literature, my nerd-dom is pretty wide-ranging at this point.

If you haven’t yet, check out the trailer for A Brief History of Time Travel, and I hope you can join me as I blog about my experiences making this film! 

Stephen Hawking threw a time traveler party in his TV Series to prove a point that there are no time travelers out there, but it was still cool!