Monday, February 14, 2011

What Is Your Favorite Science Fiction Love Story?

We're likely all familiar what Valentine's Day means (unless you are Arthur Dent's friend Ford Prefect who just arrived on Earth to do research for an entry in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), so let's do a science fiction spin on the day of love.

If I was asked to choose my favorite science-fiction-related love story, my selection would be the romance between hotshot pilot Rick Hunter and high-ranking officer Lisa Hayes from the animated TV series Robotech. In a nutshell, the Macross saga is a space opera about giant aliens arriving at Earth to find out their sought-after spaceship is in possession of the humans. The humans, using the ship, try to fold (hyperspace jump) to the Moon but end up near Pluto and must make a long journey back to Earth with the aliens in pursuit.

In the Macross Saga, there is a love triangle between Rick, Lisa and singer Lynn Minmei, which gives the show depth. Ultimately, Rick marries Lisa.

Below is a fan-made comic panel of Rick proposing to Lisa. You most likely will need to click on the image to read the text.
Photo from photobucket.com under username jasonuep.
What is your favorite love story from a science fiction movie, book, TV show, comic book, or any other medium?

11 comments:

  1. Oh, definitely the love story between Endymion and Aenea in Dan Simmon's Endymion. He's one of my favorite writers.

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  2. Not much for reading love stories. I liked the love story in Avatar. And the relationship between Ripley and Newt in Aliens was based on love.

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  3. mshatch, I'll make a note to read San Simmon's Hyperion Cantos series, then.

    Alex, Avatar is a good pick, but the story seemed too predictable for me, unfortunately.

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  4. I wish I could remember things like this. Maybe if I really started dwelling upon this with an exerted concentrated effort I might come up with something, but for now I've got nothing.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out and the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge 2011

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  5. Budd, too bad Farscape was canceled. It should be brought back.

    Arlee Bird, I'm sure it will come to you in due time.

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  6. Some of my favorite's are probably considered trite since they are so mainstream, but one of the reasons I write scifi love stories is because of stories like these: Terminator (the original movie), The Girl Who Owned the City (the bond between the sister and brother), Somewhere in Time (a time travel story -- loved both the movie and book), The Hunger Games and I am Legend (in the book he misses his wife who has died but she comes back and taunts him for a short period as the walking undead). I know those are cheesy, but each of them touched me. I also loved the new Doctor Who series relationship between Rose and the Doctor, the movie Source Code and In Time. AI touched me greatly with the boy robot's love for his mother. But if I had to pick my absolute fave scifi with a love story, it would be the movie Gattaca. Yes, I'm a sap. So sue me, but thanks for asking...

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  7. crystalleeauthor.com, that's quite a list! I'm looking forward to see how "The Hunger Games" movie matches up with the book, so I'm glad you mentioned it.

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  8. Oh god...I'm losing all hope! I have recently scrapped 2 yrs of writing (complex fan fic that got out of hand) in favor of developing my own story. My story idea came out of nowhere: a flash scene popping into my mind, gaining in girth, taking me completely by surprise with the speed at which it fattened in my mind. The problem is this: the story is essentially science fiction, a ganre which I may have been spoon-fed by my father all throughout my childhood, but ultimately a genra which I am no longer familliar with (as my tastes over the years have turned more towards the supernatural and the romantic). But the science stayed with me, even in my supernatural fan fiction, I continually attempted to explain the magical with the scientific, the why's and the how's plaguing me at every turn. But the one thing I felt that my father's science fiction always seemed to drop the ball on was the romance - there wasn't any or not much - and every book I seem to pick up nowadays, no matter which section of the library it came from, has to center and spin around that central core of love. After the initial high of purging a few pages of ideas out on paper was over, I decided to see what's out there as far as sci fi love stories go. That's when I ran into a problem. All of my searches kept comming up with book covers that I can only compare to "Harlequin in space suits" - none of them seemed credible as far as inspiration or a point of reference went(but I could be wrong - don't judge a book by it's cover thing...except when the title screams "lame" and the illustration screams "cheese" and the summary features names like Xorg...I cringed & threw up in my mouth a little!). Not only that: the stories seem to predominantly involve two humans in a future/ interstellar setting as the romantic protagonists - my story ventures into an interspecies romance, something that may or may not be weird when you really think about it. I came upon this site during my search and I was hoping that somewhere in the comments I will be able to find something that marginally alludes to an anchor point, as a start, just to see if it has been done before - and if it has, then how? But the closest I got to what I'm attempting to do is probably Avatar (interspecies romance) and it isn't, really, not when the main character is turned into an alien and stripped off his human body, to make the audience more comfortable with the idea. I'm afraid that I am writing a story which has no genre, something that is not a cheesy sex-dripping romance, something that is not hard core male-aimed sci fi,but something which falls deficiently in between or even on the outskits. It's a story of a lost young human, extracted from her world and trapped in a technologically superior alien one. She finds herself at the mercy of an alien family, struggling to, first keep her sanity, then to adapt, under the mind-boggling circumstances. All the while, she is unknowingly making a romantic connection w/ the teenage alien head of that household - he friend and her guide through the intricate,treacherous and delicate web of his society. Not only is this story "emo sci fi" but it also borders on the verge of young adult (very restrictive for romance writers). I don't even know why I'm posting this here, but I guess we all need to vent, and I need to know if this thing even has a leg to stand on....HELP ME!

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  9. Anonymous, thanks for commenting. There are plenty of science fiction stories that have interspecies romance if you want to read them for ideas. The blog www.thegalaxyexpress.net specializes in science fiction romance stories and may be able to help you move your story along. Good luck!

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  10. OMG! Thank you so much! I really, truly apreciate this! Hope restored!

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