Reavers

Human testing is pleny sci fi to me.

In the kingdom of the blind, you're the village idiot.

I like the mixture. On one side there is the legend that they were men who went insane after reaching the edge of space, one the other side we have the real explanation. It's how great stories are made. Just like a saga of old. Take 'the Illiad', for example. It tells the tale of the great battle for the city of Troy. But since this story was told by men, all kinds of artistic liberty were taken. Otherwise, it would have been a quite uninspiring report about Greeks raiding a city. But now, we have this epic tale of gods and heroes, of a grand war beyond our imagination. I love this concept, and thankfully, so does Joss.

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I didn't like the Godfather, so what?

I'd say it's exactly the opposite. Human testing gone awry is a purely technical issue. They screwed with the brain chemistry. Mental illness is a real thing, after all, and the idea of manipulating the brain in a manner that induces mental illness is pure hard sci-fi. The "edge of space" thing is much more metaphysical and difficult to map out in a scientific way. Sure, some people might go insane, but the implication that there's a natural process that drives large numbers of people insane is pure philosophical speculation. We have no reason to believe such would be the case scientifically. At best, it's an extreme version of agoraphobia, and very extreme at that. Agoraphobics rarely turn into cannibalistic rapists. Almost never, in fact.


This is not to say I don't appreciate that explanation. Nothing wrong with some metaphysics in the sci-fi mix. But it doesn't really make sense to call it less sci-fi than something we already know is scientifically plausible.

(Incidentally, the "edge of space" phraseology is problematic itself. Unless they found a way to cover several billion light-years within a reasonable period of time, they're never going to reach the "edge of space." The "edge of the solar system" makes little sense, since there are plenty of close-by (relatively speaking, anyway) systems at the edge of any solar system. The edge of the galaxy? Perhaps a bit more believable, since the void between galaxies is essentially a cosmic desert unless one counts the quantum aspects. Still, a certain number of "stars" you see in the night sky are distant galaxies and you would see far more of them if you were out there at the edge of the galaxy. You'd never be looking into the "void" per se. In any event, it's still a highly metaphysical way of approaching the creation of Reavers, though.)