In the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, the worlds of the seemingly impossible and roaming imagination, Across continents, countries, cities, and neighborhoods, we come across a specific type of person,we are many. Us, the ones most commonly referred to by the rest of society as geeks and nerds, the people who cheer every time that we see a new animated Star Wars series and argue over who the best characters in Lord of the Rings really are. Wherever you find one of us, it probably won’t be very long before you find more. And why is this? Because we come together. We share with each other. We grow together alongside our love for these themes, forming bonds with each other that can only be formed by the mutual admiration and respect for the works of others and quite often, ourselves. But what is it that attracts us to such things as sci-fi and fantasy? What makes us come together to talk about these things and express the enjoyment we get out of them? To put it simply, what makes us nerds and geeks the nerds and geeks that we are? For that answer, why don’t we simply take a look at the way that we all think? It doesn't matter if you’re a sci-fi fan or a fantasy fan or a combination of both. There is something that attracts all of us to these two genres , be it little or largely known to ourselves. The one basic thing that we all seem to be attracted to is the separation between our reality and that of the stories that we see, hear about, or even read about.
When our own lives get to be a bit on the dull side, when we feel like escaping our own day to day life to observe the more entertaining stories of incredible characters and scenarios, we resort to these. Sci-fi and fantasy allow us to feel more like we get to be part of worlds where unbelievable things can occur; worlds where what we can actually make real our own dreams of creating and crafting the environment and story that unfolds around us or be the audience to somebody else’s work. We, as the enthusiasts that we are, give ourselves the gift of being able to more easily express our own creativeness. For some, it’s the art that we create. For others, it’s our ability to craft stories that may be remembered for years to come. And for others, it may even be our ability to deeply discuss the things that come into our knowledge. By allowing ourselves to become immersed in this environment where we allow our minds to roam freely and reach planes that others may not even know of; by allowing ourselves to be surrounded by the same people who will magnify our own thoughts and impulses, we can come to be the same type people who have affected the history of the world simply because of their thoughts in the subjects that they love.
Now, this is only a possible reason for why we all actually like sci-fi and fantasy in the ways that we do. We can all probably agree that there’s a good amount of other, much simpler reasons. Simply the fact that they’re both pretty cool is a good enough reason as any. But for the purpose of having people realize that there is in fact a deeper reason why we all come together in such large groups of people who are fans of these exact same things, and to remind that our own thought processes, crafted by these interests, allow us to form unique paths for both ourselves and others.
- Sebastian Caicedo
Sunday, November 18, 2012
