You’ve Got Mail (aka: What Makes a Film Sci-Fi)

I know what your thinking: what does a rom-com staring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan released in 1998 about two people falling in love over email but it real life only argue have anything to do with science fiction. Well, if you take this trip down history lane, you will soon find out.

The year is 1975, Ed Roberts (not to be confused with activist Edward V. Roberts) releases the Altair 8800; he claims this to be the worlds first personal computer (PC). It launches for $439 which, in today’s market, is worth $2,125.07 – holy Jesus, this man was the older version of Tim Cook. Since this is the first computer not used in the laboratory for stupid nerd things that only nerds need to know, people had the figure out how to use sticks and stones on that thing. And 20 years later, in 1995, Gary Kremen creates a little site (I don’t know if you’ve heard of it) called Match.com. To populate the site, Kremen made the people who worked for him, his girlfriend, and himself make profiles on Match.com. Later, his girlfriend would leave him for someone she met on Match.com; this would make him sad because his girlfriend left him for someone else, but happy because it meant his crazy little idea of people finding love online wasn’t that stupid.

Know you’re probably thinking, “Gee Kevin, this information is really obscure and poses a lot of questions: like why do know all of this information about Match.com? But you still haven’t explained why this relevant to the sci-fi genre.” Well, if You’ve Got Mail was released 3 or 4 years prior – or even before 1975 – and the plot was still the same, it would have been a sci-fi rom-com. Why? Because to people in 1974, the thing in the movie that allows them to talk to each other without them knowing who the other person is wouldn’t be called a computer, but something like Beep-Boop Box.

What I’m trying to get at here is, the time period in which a movie is made can determine if it is a sci-fi movie or not. If 1984 by George Orwell was written in 1984 (like how the movie adaptation was released in 1984), it wouldn’t a gritty dystopian showing the why Communism is bad, but some old dude over dramatically complaining about his life.