The majority of the most engaging and convincing sci-fi stories out there can be boiled down to one simple, concise "what if?" question. Star Trek is "what if humans come together and explore space", The Matrix is "what if the world is a computer simulation", and After Earth is "what if we keep letting M. Night Shyamalan make films". It's these questions, often derived from our own lived experience and current world, which serve as a way into fantastical fictional worlds full of crazy aliens, awesome spaceships and laser pistols. Especially the laser pistols. It also means that SF fans are the most dedicated of any genre, their imaginations being piqued by the questions asked by authors and sent flying off in all directions. The worlds created in science fiction films, TV shows, novels and video games are usually so fully realised that most bases are covered, with the creators dreaming up everything from fictional races to languages, countries and technologies. Still, there tend to be gaps in those stories, and these fans manage to plug them. And a lot of those fans happen to be on Reddit. The controversial web behemoth has a whole sub-forum called "Ask Science Fiction" where users ask and answer lingering questions about their favourite fictional worlds, using in-universe knowledge, rules, and common sense. There's everything from discussions on whether The Hulk would be a good swimmer to in-depth continuity discussions of The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra animated shows. Today we've rounded up those Redditors best "what if?" questions and answers - these are ten perplexing sci-fi problems that were solved by the internet!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
