Westworld Is Quality Science Fiction

Published January 15, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi Guys,

Thanks so much for your podcasts. They really add to my experience with the show. I watch Sunday, listen to the instacast Monday on the way to work, watch the show with my wife on Wednesday, listen to the full show on Thursday back and forth to work and listen to the telegraph Friday and into the weekend. Great for driving.

Anyway, I’ve found Westworld to be a television revelation and hope you can address not just why it’s quality, but why it’s quality science fiction and what that means for the medium.

Battlestar and the contours of terrorism, Star Trek and the realities of utopia, Marvel’s Civil War and how who watches the watchmen, the Watchmen and the human side of our heroes, Star Wars and redemption.

Isn’t this what science fiction at its best
attempts to be? To tell a story through a foreign lens in order to explore a topic having nothing to do with science or fantasy, such that the the audience comes full circle, reading or watching not because of the medium, but regardless?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Aaron

P.S. A plug for making the top twenty this week: The answer to why this is good sci-fi and what that says about sci-fi shouldn’t depend on the finale or whether or not we viscerally like it (we will) but on how the story has gotten there.

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