Daily Dose of English 107
Sci-fi
Daily Dose of English 107
Intermediate
Hey everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about sci-fi. Hang on, I have a cat hair in my mouth, I think. Because my cat has been here with me for the past 20 minutes or so. I've actually been delaying recording this episode because he was very comfortable and I didn't wanna move too much to make him go away. But he's still here. He's actually right in front of the microphone. You wanna say hi? Meow. Say hi. No? Okay, whatever. Yes, you're very sweet, aren't you? Okay, anyways, today we're talking about sci-fi, which is a style of storytelling that I like quite a lot. And I wanna talk about the genre and the general, what happens in those sort of stories and some movies and books that I recommend. So sci-fi comes from science fiction. It's just a shortened version of that name. Sort of like how wifi stands for something, wireless feet. No, that's not right. I don't know what it stands for, but it stands for something. And sci-fi stands for science fiction. And the idea with sci-fi is that it is a fictional story. So usually set in the future and about something Sorry, hang on. It's about something not real that doesn't happen in our world, that's fiction, and then it's based on some kind of science-y change. So new technology or new specific big changes in how maybe the world works or something like that. And that means that there's a lot of different kinds of science fiction. There can be science fiction set in the past, in the future, in the present, in alternate reality, in different worlds, different dimensions. There's so many different versions of sci-fi. But usually it means that there are people like humans that we can relate to still, but they live in a very different technological world. So one of the most famous sci-fi stories of all time is Star Wars, for example. And Star Wars, I've talked about this before, is set in a world that has vastly superior technology to ours. They have incredible supercomputers, artificial intelligence that's generally intelligent, all these different things that are massively more advanced than we are. They travel between worlds and stars and the galaxy. But they're regular people at the end of the day. Some are aliens, but they're mostly people and creatures living their lives in a story that we can relate to, which is why it's not purely fantasy. Fantasy usually has to do with things that are not even just scientific differences, but they're just fully different. Like there's magic, or there's more creatures from some sort of lost fantasy. The line is blurry, but you can usually tell. Fantasy novels typically have worse technology, but maybe more stuff going on. So there aren't computers, but there are wizards or something like that. So things like Lord of the Rings or The Name of the Wind, lots of things like that. However, science fiction is what we're talking about today. And I think one of the best examples of science fiction in movies, actually, is Jurassic Park. The original Jurassic Park movie is a really good example of science fiction because it was set in that day, basically. It was set in the, what, 80s when it was made? I think it was... No, I think it's a 90s movie. It must be a 90s movie. I don't know. Whenever the movie was made, it was set to be in that time, right? The book's a little bit older, but it was supposed to be like a current thing happening, except we have the technology to bring back dinosaurs. That's the main distinction in the science aspect. And I like how sort of clear that is, right? Everything else is on earth. Everything else is normal. The entire world is the same. It's only that one change. or another science fiction book that I quite like is The Martian. The Martian is set in our world. It's not said what year it is, but it's assumed to be another like 20 years in the future. So the near future. And the main change is that humans have gone to Mars and humans have been on Mars and we do science there and stuff. That's not a humongous leap to make. Bringing back dinosaurs is a pretty big step, right? We aren't even close to that. But with going to Mars, we also aren't close, but we are thinking about it where we want to, and we've sent machines there. And so it's a lot closer than making dinosaurs. and that entire world is otherwise the same. They have the same music, the same history, everything else is the same, the same languages, right? There's nothing else more fantasy-esque about it. But that's not to say that everything is, right? I just gave the example of Star Wars, which is certainly set in a much more fantastical universe where there's... Earth doesn't even exist. They don't speak English. They speak other languages. They speak what's... I think it's called like common or basic. I think what is what it is. It's called basic. And there's all these other things that are part of this universe that make it an interesting um, uh, story, I guess. There's plenty of other examples like that. I don't have a Star Trek, for example. That's a good one. Actually. Star Trek is a very famous TV show. Fantastic. If you want to learn more English, by the way, it does, there's a ton of episodes. It's really a lot of people really love it. Um, but that's another one set in this world that has way more than just one or two changes that make things different. Another one is where there is some kind of new technology that comes to Earth or that we get in some way. And we typically put that under sci-fi, even if it's not necessarily in some way. So for example, Arrival is a good movie from, I think, 2016. And in Arrival, there are aliens that come to Earth. Everything else is the same. Everything else is normal. Earth is the same. It's 2016 and it's just what would happen if aliens came to visit us on Earth? And that's the entire story. And that is still sort of considered science fiction because it focuses on this difference in science and that sort of thing. And that's also a good movie if you want another good movie to watch, I definitely recommend it. And that sort of type of science fiction with like one big change or one difference is also, sorry, not one big change, that's the one I said first, the one change coming to us even if it's not necessarily science fiction. Um, you'd probably consider in a lot of ways, Marvel movies to be sort of sci-fi, depending on which one, because they usually have some amount of science fiction. However, they've kind of generated their own genre of like superhero film or superhero movie, because they don't really feel like science fiction, because it's a lot more like hand wavy. That's a really good word. Hand wavy is when something isn't explained and it's just like, it's fine, it's fine. Don't ignore it, right? It's fine. And when you hand wave something away, it can be a bit annoying if that's something you want to focus on. So in the case of like Iron Man, which actually is a good movie, the original Iron Man is very good. That one's quite science fiction-y. But going on to later ones, like what else? I haven't seen the Marvel movies in a long time. But I think you know what I mean. I'm sure you've seen one or two, and you know that there's a lot of stuff that could be science fiction-y, but it's also like not, and it's like magic, and there's all these different things combined to create superhero film that isn't really science-y or fiction-y like that. It's just a different thing. But anyways, so. And then getting into, Recommendations, I've already listed a bunch of things that I recommend. Star Wars, Star Trek. Like I said, Iron Man, Arrival. What else did I say? The Martian. I also just listened to Project Hail Mary, which is similar to The Martian, but it's a little bit more fantastical. And I quite like, I enjoyed that one too. Ender's Game is super famous. Ender's Game is a great book that I definitely recommend. I think there's a movie too, but I'm not sure. I don't know if I've seen it. No, I think there is, because Harrison Ford was in it. Whatever. Ender's Game is a good book. What other good science fiction books are there that I enjoy? Shoot. I'm sure there are others. I've always been a bit more into fantasy. I think I talked about that in a past episode, so it's a little bit harder for me to come up with titles, but yeah. Huh. Not really sure. Whatever, anyways, I think I've listed enough. You have some homework to do now to watch some of these movies and see what you like. But I'm gonna end it there for today. I thank you so very much for listening to this episode of The Daily Dose of English and I hope that you learned a couple things and I hope that you watch some of these movies or read books. All right, I'll see you next time. Have a good one, bye.
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