I still remember thumbing through the Science Fiction section at Hollywood Video one Friday night when I was seventeen years old. It was 2003, I had no plans, and somehow ended up with plenty of time on my hands. Whenever I got bored as a teenager I’d flip through stacks of movies at the video store and pray that inspiration would strike. On this particular night it clicked when I stumbled across Silent Running . The cover looked like it had been blasted through a couple nuclear wars, but once I read the synopsis on the back – some dude traveling through space wants to preserve the last plants on Earth – I was sold.
I dropped the VHS in my VCR that night (I know, I know, insert nostalgic *thunk* of VHS tape here) and spent the next hour-and-a-half immersed in this sad reflection on loneliness and destruction. It was strange and quiet and hit me in a way that stayed with me for weeks. I may never have picked it up if not for that random afternoon, and it informed how I thought about sci-fi more than I realised at the time.
Last Friday night I found myself paralyzed by Netflix options at 11 pm. The scrolling stopped, visions of Star Wars: Episode I danced through my head, and I retreated back to bed defeated. Every movie looks the same when you’re scrolling through two-dimensional thumbnails for the thirty-thousandth time. The algorithm also seems to know I like science fiction, so it insists on recommending yet another series featuring $TELLIAMASSNAME leaning over some virtual cityscape. Don’t get me wrong, I love streaming media and the access it provides, but something’s been lost in the trade-off.
Okay, let me back up.
Streaming media has opened up science fiction like never before. My high school students have all seen Blade Runner , The Matrix , Children of Men , Avatar , movies I grew up with that they discover for the first time in my class. This spring we did a unit on dystopian fiction and kids wrote papers comparing The Hunger Games to films I’d never heard of from South Korea, the UK, and America’s most talented unknowns. Teaching science fiction has been a blast these last few years, in no small part because of all the fantastic content students have access to.
But something else happened when media went from tangible to streaming, and I’m still trying to identify what we lost.
Video stores required commitment. If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to drive to the store, flip through shelves upon shelves of VHS tapes, decide on your movie, pay for it, and drive home. Maybe you rented something you ended up hating, but you watched it anyway because you already went through the effort of obtaining it. Physical media forced you to endure.
I’ll never forget when I bought the special edition Blade Runner DVD (*spoiler alert* I’m that guy). I rented it first to make sure my hype was real, but I bought it to watch the documentary about the creation of the movie. I spent an entire afternoon reading up on Scott’s vision, watching him talk about his inspirations, diving into deleted scenes, and watching the movie again with commentary. Physical special editions invited you to dive deeper into these imaginary worlds.
Streaming services eliminate friction. Every movie is now right there at your fingertips available to watch whenever you want. Sure, that’s convenient as hell, but it also means I’ll spend five minutes of spare time watching The Expanse on my phone rather than commit to watching it on the television. It means I can marathon ten seasons of Black Mirror when I hate nine of them. Streaming lets us dip in and out of movies with ease.
My students aren’t burdened by the friction of physical media quite like I was. Hell, they likely don’t even own physical copies of movies. They assume that if I assign George Orwell’s 1984 and suggest watching the film adaptation of 1984 they can immediately pop open a laptop and watch it. Even literacy – the struggle of finding and reading media – is gone.
Does that affect how they consume movies? I think so. When everything is immediate and effortless, you throw out movies that don’t grab you within the first twenty minutes. You’re less willing to trudge through a slow burn because something else will always be available to entertain you. My AP class watched A Boy and His Dog last year – this crazy, awesome post-apocalyptic movie from 1975 that I picked up after hours spent combing the shelves of that same video store where I watched Silent Running . Many kids didn’t understand it, didn’t like the pacing. They’re so used to jump-cut action movies that anything quieter hits them strange.
Yet the kids who loved it LOVED it. They wrote some incredible papers on masculinity and survival and civilization versus savagery. That movie split my classroom in a way that hasn’t happened since. Part of me mourns that instant access because it means students might be missing those gems.
Speaking of algorithms… I hate algorithms. Every sci-fi movie I watch leads Netflix to think I’ll enjoy more sci-fi movies. So instead of recommending only movies I’ve already seen it loads up suggestions for new space adventures, future dystopias, and time travel comedies. It creates a feedback loop where I’m watching more and more stuff that hits very specific genres without being challenged.
Compare that to walking up and down physically shelves where you may grab Brazil because the cover looks interesting, or maybe Coherence because it’s right next to something else you were considering. Physicalstrolling led to discovery; algorithm recommendations ensure you’ll never stray too far.
Now don’t get me wrong, streaming has done wonders for international and independent science fiction. Movies like Aniara – this absolutely breathtaking Swedish space poem that would have never seen the light of day in America if we were still renting movies – can reach global audiences. Streaming has widened the gate far beyond what film could have ever accomplished.
But I think there’s something lost when it comes to shared sci-fi experiences. Back in the day, when access was limited and science fiction movies were harder to find, more people had seen the same thing. I can make assumptions that other sci-fi nerds have watched Alien or The Terminator or Star Wars simply because there were fewer avenues for viewing films. With thousands upon thousands of films across streaming services we’re all watching something different.
I’ve noticed this divide among my students as well. A decade ago I could casually reference The Matrix or Minority Report and assume students had at least heard of the movies. Now their science-fiction knowledge is broad yet inexpert. Some are well-versed in anime series I’ve never seen, others can quote every Marvel movie yet haven’t seen Fahrenheit 451. Kids are discovering Star Trek through current series, never knowing the classics that spawned them.
It’s not better or worse, really. It’s just different. Less unified but more diverse.
I also hate that streaming libraries aren’t permanent. Movies come and go based on studio contracts that deserve to exist, and students I recommend Brazil to may not have access to it because it’s no longer streaming. Never happened to me with DVDs or VHS.
I feel pressure to watch movies now that I never used to. Should I watch it now or add it to my queue? Will it disappear by the time I get around to it? Now there’s anxiety around choosing what to watch.
Am I just being old and yearning for the days when going to the movie store was an adventure? Will my students look back fondly on their Netflix queues and remember stumbling across some obscure sci-fi channel and falling in love with Atypical Robots? ?
Part of me thinks that’s what we lost when we exchanged flipping through shelves for algorithmic predictions. We traded diving into a movie for endless scrolling of pixels. Science fiction allows us to explore the future, and how we discover new movies and shows is the future of watching movies.
Science fiction has changed, of course. TV shows like Black Mirror and The Expanse are written WITH streaming in mind. Bingeing cable TV is a different experience than committing to a VHS tape, and streaming allows for larger budget epics and ground-breaking filmmaking. I’m all for that.
But I’ll always yearn for popping in a DVD, seeing that spinning circle of life, and knowing I was in it for the long haul. Streaming lets us sample new movies like never before, and I fear we’re losing students by only giving them a taste.
Diane teaches English in Philadelphia and uses sci-fi to make teenagers care about literature. She writes about how the genre reflects real-world anxieties—from climate fears to social rebellion—with humor, warmth, and the occasional classroom story.