Byzantium's Shores has turned John Scalzi's list of the 50 sci-fi films you must see before you die into a meme (via archy) wherein one prints the list and then bolds the ones they've seen. Nobody asked me to do this (my understanding is that memes like this are by-invitation-only) but I'm going to do it anyway because I was struck by how many I've seen--worse, how many I own.

Now, I am NOT a geek, self-confessed or otherwise, as John is. It took me 40 years to learn how to do my own oil changes, a decade to get over my antipathy toward computers (which I still have problems with), and I have yet to master VCR programming. When I was a kid I read Sherlock Holmes, not Jules Verne; the Hardy Boys, not Tom Swift; Moby Dick and The Deerslayer, not War of the Worlds and Looking Backward. I didn't discover sci-fi lit until I was in high school when I read 1984 and Brave New World. I have never been a devotee, though over the years I've read most of the masters from Verne and Wells to Philp Dick and Rafferty (one of my faves), yet I have seen almost every one of the films on this list and own many of them. To whit (seen--bolded; own--*asterisked*):


*The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
*Back to the Future
*Blade Runner
*Brazil
*Bride of Frankenstein
*Brother from Another Planet
*A Clockwork Orange
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind
*Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
*The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
*Escape From New York
*ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
*Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
*Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
*The Matrix
*Metropolis
*On the Beach
*Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
*Robocop
*Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
*Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
*The Stepford Wives
Superman
*Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing from Another World
Things to Come
Tron
*12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
*20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
*2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
*War of the Worlds (1953 version) (**I also own a transcription of Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio version)

Some of this is explained by the fact that I'm a film buff and there are classics on this list that transcend their genre (Metropolis and A Clockwork Orange, for example) but for many of them there is no explanation whatsoever. Why, for instance, did I see, let alone buy, Terminator 2, a piece of boring, SFX-heavy eye-candy that isn't as good as the first Terminator and barely surpasses Vixens on Venus in quality? I can't say. I don't watch it. I've never even cracked the celophane it's wrapped in--and I've had it for almost 10 years.

It's a mystery. I went to see Khan, I don't remember why, thought it was silly and never went to another Star Trek movie even though I liked the tv series. I went to see the last two Matrix films and was heartily sorry I had wasted the money. I'm not a fan, I don't haunt second-hand bins hoping to find a clean copy of The Body Snatchers, I don't attend conventions, and I stopped waiting breathlessly for the latest Star Wars movie after the second one (which should NOT be on the list, imo). Yet still I own all these sci-fi flicks. Much to my shame, I even own Independence Day.

I can't explain this patent character flaw. Perhaps it's a glitch in my programming. Perhaps I surrendered to being surrounded by it all my life. Perhaps it's a weakness, like gambling or scarfing chocolate cream pies at a single sitting. I don't know. I suppose it must say something to me or I wouldn't have bothered, but for the life of me I can't imagine what. I am not by nature a fantasist, a geek, or any form of scientist. I've never read Popular Science and technology baffles me. I was reading The Brothers Karamazov when the other kids were reading Childhood's End. Nothing about sci-fi suits anything in my tastes or my emotional make-up, yet there they are: three dozen out of 50, most of which I own.

Go figure. Personally, I don't get it.