Sci-fi addict can’t OD

THIS year I went to my first “Star Trek” convention. And while the experience didn’t necessarily change my universe, running around a hotel teeming with Trekkies seemed to be another indicator that the planets have aligned in favor of my lifelong passion.

Scotty may have been beamed up, but science fiction is alive and well. With the fall TV schedule loaded like photon torpedo tubes in a battle against the Borg, I feel as if I’ve been transported to a universe where sci-fi is the McDonald’s of entertainment.

It’s been like that for me since childhood, when I reveled in the original “Star Trek” with the rest of my nerd-pack family. (I use that term affectionately, because there is a pack of them. And they are nerds.) Indeed, I am the daughter of a physics professor and a woman who wanted to mind-meld with Mr. Spock. My brother and sister got PhDs in chemistry and physics; because I couldn’t add 7 and 5, I went the science fiction -- not science -- route.

But don’t feel sorry for me. This fall it seems as if every space creature this side of Alpha Centauri has found a home on the networks’ TV schedule.

Now, on Friday nights, the television lineup offers a sci-fi orgy: Joss Whedon’s “Firefly,” followed by “Stargate,” “Stargate: Atlantis” and “Battlestar Galactica.” Then on Sunday nights, I’m aboard “4400” and “Dead Zone.”

That, friends, is some television programming.

You can keep your “Law & Order: Special Group Hug Unit” and “CSI: Akron” and “Two and a Half Male Humans.” For me, it’s must-see TV when a human blasts an alien -- or better yet, a Cylon -- to bits and asks questions later.

You would think that from reading the obituaries for the “Star Trek” franchise that the genre was going to go the way of HAL 9000. After all, since “The Next Generation” premiered in 1987, there has been a “Star Trek” show on the air continuously until this spring. But this fall’s lineup, including “Threshold,” “Invasion” and “Surface” and the horror-oriented “Supernatural” and “Night Stalker,” will fill the hole in my heart.

Arguably, even “Commander in Chief,” with Geena Davis as the president of the United States, could be classified as science fiction.

Oops. There goes my lifetime membership in NOW.

Why, suddenly, is there so much science fiction on TV? Times TV critic Robert Lloyd speculated in his review of “Threshold” and “Surface” that the proliferation of these genre shows might be a result of Americans’ anxiety in the age of terrorism.

But Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, has another theory:

“Not only is there all this science fiction on TV all of a sudden, so much of it is identical,” he says, citing “Surface,” “Invasion” and “Threshold.” “When the aliens come, they’ll come in water, etc. One of the theories I have is that the aliens have already come, and they’re planting the idea so that when they reveal themselves, we’ll be ready for them.”

Uh, professor, you’re scaring me.

Seriously, Thompson says, “the thing that science fiction does is what nobody on TV does -- outside the news. It looks at the enormous issues of equality, war, feminism, racism, international relations -- big, big stories ignored by mainstream TV for obvious reasons. Science fiction is the easiest way to deal with it.”

Says Mark Altman, editorial director of CFQ/Cinefantastique, a magazine devoted to sci-fi television and film, “People are definitely looking for escapist fare in the wake of 9/11, but at the same time networks are looking for water-cooler shows -- shows people will talk up at work. Science-fiction fans tend to be viral, if you will, they like to spread the word, get on the Web and things like that.... Networks need a core audience to tub-thump.”

Whatever the reason, now I won’t have to settle for just “Time Trax” or “VR.5” or “Babylon 5.”

What -- you never heard of those shows? Puny Earthling. The aliens will never reveal themselves as long as the vast majority of the population remains so ignorant.

All my life I’ve been defending science fiction as the highest form of popular art. After all, it’s not even

constrained by the laws of physics. Gravity? Optional. Thousands of

light years from another planet?

Be there before the commercial

break.

And guess what? Conveniently enough, all the aliens speak English.

*

Linda Whitmore can be reached at linda.whitmore@latimes.com.