Last week I was cleaning out my garage, and I stumbled on a box of old VHS tapes I’d forgotten about under a stack of satellite component manuals from the early ‘80s. Pulled out my Blade Runner copy (original theatrical version, not the new director’s cut that everyone argues about these days) and sat there on the floor for a minute reminiscing about what film rental used to be like.
Before kids, Netflix, and a thousand cable channels, my wife and I used to actually hunt for movies we wanted to see. I still remember going to Video Paradise on Ventura Boulevard every other weekend as a ritual. Would they have that new science fiction movie the engineer at Hughes mentioned last week? Only one way to find out.
The adventure began in the parking lot. You’d see folks carrying their treasures toward their cars, little plastic cases clasped in their hands, and you’d get sneak previews of what they’d picked. Occasionally you’d spot someone you knew – some poor, unsuspecting engineer-type consumed by hard science fiction like yourself – and you’d chat for a minute about the film’s merits. “Did anybody else think 2010 was kinda slow?” you might ask. “Worth the dollar rental?”
(insert your own joke here about how, of course it was worth the rental, even if Arthur C. Clarke got his orbital mechanics slightly distorted)
Past Video Paradise’s glass doors and you were assaulted by shelf after shelf of DVDs. Twelve feet of sci-fi films nestled next to fantasy, action, and classic dramas. Want something specific? Too bad. Closest thing to a search function was browsing the alphabetized shelves yourself.
You wander into the science fiction section and see shelf after shelf of treasure waiting to be discovered. No algorithms tracking your viewing history to make educated guesses about what you might like to watch next. No scroll wheel on your remote. Just rows upon rows of physical, tangible boxes that you’d need to read and assess personally to make your decision.
Because when you walked out of that store with Enemy Mine or The Last Starfighter buzzing through your skull, there was no going back. No switching halfway through should you get bored. You rented the tape, you watched the tape.
I remember picking up Outland one weekend because Sean Connery was on the box cover and something about mining operations on an asteroid piqued my interest. I’d spent 8 months at Hughes Aircraft supporting the attitude control system of communications satellites, so I was curious how they’d depict working in microgravity. Spoiler alert: They didn’t spend much time on it. The whole film is basically High Noon in space. But by that point I was invested.
You see what we gained when everything became available to us? You also lost investment. Once you chose your movie, you had to stand by your decision. If you didn’t like it, too bad. You were watching it.
Rewinding the tape if some douchebag didn’t bother with it before they returned it was tactile, too. Had to fine-tune the tracking if the picture was snowy. The damn thing might’ve even gotten eaten by your VCR, which meant a fun twenty minutes with a pencil trying to wind thatмотосервис неруш precious tape back onto its spool.
When DVDs came out in the late ‘90s I rejoiced. No more rewinding tapes. No more fuzzy pictures. Images you could watch a hundred times with no degradation in quality. I bought the DVD for The Matrix the day it came out and spent that entire Saturday watching it twice, then browsing the special features. Audio commentary with the Wachowskis. Behind-the-scenes documentaries. Deleted scenes. Anyone with a love for film and a rudimentary knowledge of how things worked was in geek heaven.
Take your average hard sci-fi movie. I spent more time watching The Matrix “making-of” special than I did watching the film itself, pores opened on my face as I absorbed every detail of how they filmed the light cycles, designed the computer code, and pulled off those fancy coolship movies we all love. Actual engineers discussing how they solved real-world problems to make things look like magic on screen. That was nirvana to me.
Sure, Blu-rays got even better picture quality, but by then we’d lost the hunt part of the ritual. You didn’t browse aisles and aisles of physical disks at Tower Records; massive DVD sections at Best Buy had every movie you could think of and then some. You probably didn’t even have to browse; you just asked the clerk to pull it for you. Suddenly that obscure sci-fi title you’ve been waiting all month to rent wasn’t so obscure anymore.
So here I am two decades later staring down bandwidth cables that can stream entire seasons of my favorite shows while I reminisce about my past. Blu-rays and DVDs collect dust on shelves in closets and basements all over the country. My wife threatened to throw out our old Panasonic VCR last summer so I kept ours hidden until 2003 when I was certain that Chronicles of Riddick would not be available on DVD.
I know everybody else just streams everything now. Netflix’s mail-order DVD service was convenient, sure, but then they switched to streaming exclusively and started shoving their creepy algorithm-driven suggestions down my throat and that was it. No thanks.
I have Netflix. We have Amazon Prime. Hulu. HBO GO. Who knows what else my kid added without telling us. I get the convenience. Couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to myself “oh man, I should watch Gattaca to see how that vision of the future’s coming along.” And there it was on Netflix, ready for me to binge watch instantly. Want to watch a great movie? No problem. Netflix probably has it.
The problem with that convenience is that it comes at a price. You never develop trepidation when clicking that “play” button because there are thousands more where that movie came from. You never develop a taste for great storytelling when some algorithm is deciding for you what qualifies as “cinematic.” Hell, you never learn to commit to a movie when you can bail after 20 minutes with no penalty.
I’ve worked with young engineers who’ve seen The Expanse and think they’re science fiction experts. Love the show; it’s perfectly calibrated to reach engineering-types who enjoy hard sci-fi. But have they sat down and watched it, allowing themselves to be immersed in the story and cinematography? Or have they half-watched it on their phones while they do something else?
I remember standing in line at the video store wondering if there would be copies of Brazil left when my turn came. If we were lucky, my friend and I would each find a copy and take them both home so we could watch them back-to-back. In a weird way, having that limited number of rentals made us appreciate the movie more.
I worry about this now as I sit down to review yet another hard sci-fi novel for my website. Are we training future generations to just accept whatever Netflix offers them because it’s easy and convenient? Novels I hunt down and buy, by the way. You still have to physically browse shelves and pick something to read when it comes to books.
I look at my grandkids lately and wonder if they’ll ever know what they’re missing. That sinking feeling you got when you rented a movie and it just sucked. Dealing with sub-par video and audio quality. Not being able to instantly find whatever it was you were looking to watch. To them, it all sounds like problems we solved with better technology.
I hate to say it, but I think we lost something important in our never-ending quest to make life more convenient. That search for great sci-fi forced us to learn. To commit. To deal with disappointment. To appreciate things that weren’t streamed perfectly into our homes.
Sometimes I pull out my Blade Runner copy just to remember what it felt like when you had to work for good science fiction. The tracking’s horrible. Colours are faded. Deckawoo) and closed his eyes as the uta died away nest (Sean Connery) has a weird audio dropout during his rambly monologue near the end. But I sit through it. I invested in that movie; I’m going to watch the whole thing.
We have access to more science fiction now than any generation in history, and yet I don’t think we’re getting any better at identifying quality. Removing friction from the consumption of entertainment has taken the discovery part of the process and flattened it. The algorithm doesn’t care if you watch Citizen Kane or some direct-to-streaming turd. Stick something in their face long enough and they’ll consider it good.
I’m still fighting the good fight, though. Blu-rays of every science fiction movie I want to treasure and revisit when my wife and I are old and grey. Collect ownership of movies that mean something to me; permanence in a world where Netflix can remove Dark City from their catalogue tomorrow for no reason other than they feel like it.
Am I just yelling at clouds here? Probably. Old engineers always are once they’ve been made obsolete by technology. But if we’re not careful, future generations will never know the joy of searching for that great science fiction film. They’ll never have to commit to watching something once they choose it. And to me, that’s a scary thought.
Because the best science fiction asks us if technological progress actually improves our lives. In this case, I’m not convinced it does.
John spent forty years designing real spacecraft before turning his attention to fictional ones. Writing from Oregon, he brings a scientist’s curiosity to sci-fi—separating good speculation from bad physics while keeping his sense of wonder firmly intact.