Bleep me up Scotty: why is sci-fi suddenly so sweary?
Modern reboots of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek show that swearwords have finally reached space. It’s a smegging shame
‘You just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. And it’s a total headfuck.” OK, so Jordan Peele’s Netflix reboot doesn’t actually begin like that – but it could. While most of its first creepy tale, of a comedian (Kumail Nanjiani) who discovers success comes at a price, could have been broadcast in 1958, that era would have struggled with the 15 F-bombs. Meanwhile, on board Star Trek Discovery, currently on Netflix, swearwords are dropped like photon torpedoes. Classic sci-fi has returned, but with a modern potty mouth.
The future didn’t used to be so profane. HG Wells wrote an essay on the “vivid, scorching and variegated” world of cursing, yet the worst word in War of the Worlds is “tripod”. Authors such as Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and EE Smith invented futuristic expletives such as “Tanj!” (“There Ain’t No Justice”, credited to Niven) to stay decorous. As the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction entry on swearing makes clear, these could be pretty weak – try shouting “By space!” when you next stub your toe.