Early in our marriage, about 3 B.C., Husband and I decided we would each show an active interest in the other’s pursuits by reading one book from the other’s favored genre. (Weren’t we so cute back then? Assigning each other reading material?) Husband read about five pages of Pride and Prejudice. I read Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book, an amazing time-travel adventure set during the Black Plague.

I won’t say that the experience converted me to sci-fi, but it definitely opened my mind a little bit to try new things. I went on to enjoy a few more Willis books (Passage, Bellwether, and To Say Nothing of the Dog in particular). I endured, rather than enjoyed, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (books and films). (Husband will say this is fantasy, rather than sci-fi. Whatever.) I expected to like the Thursday Next series (Jane Eyre and sci-fi!), but was horribly bored by them instead. But “Firefly” and its movie sequel, Serenity permanently won me over to the sub-genre known as “space opera.”

I discovered that the science fiction I love has something in common with the nineteenth-century English novels I love: the characters must navigate through a world with very different, but very defined, social rules. The tension between the social strictures and the characters’ actions is what makes these relatively simple plots so enjoyable. The trouble with contemporary Western fiction, in my opinion, is that conventions have become so loose that for most characters, there’s nothing to bump up against. That’s why most re-settings of nineteenth century plots are set in environments with artificial social hierarchies, like high school (Clueless, for example). And the trouble with bad science fiction is that the social or physical parameters are so ill-defined or changeable that I can’t perceive anything as tension. The Thursday Next novels, for example; if there are an infinite number of dei ex machina that can turn the plot on its ear in a moment, then why bother becoming invested in it?

With all the “Firefly” episodes exhausted, my current obsession is “Battlestar Galactica.” I have just started season 2.0, and I am enraptured even though all the male leads are teeeeeeny-tiny little guys. Apollo is the size of wedding-cake groom, and Gaius, while hugely entertaining, is obviously a gay elf. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being an elf.) Starbuck is the most strapping of the lot, but of course she’s a girl. Adama and Tigh are normal-sized, but I can’t get over how they look older in their flashbacks than they do in the present. Lords of Kobol, those are some funny flashbacks.

The great thing about BSG (as we call it) is that the parameters of that world are so well-defined. The futuristic elements were mostly set up during the first miniseries, with the main conflict being Cylons vs. humans. There’s just enough new plot being revealed to keep you interested, but not so much that you feel like the writers are making it up as they go along. There are no Space Aliens of the Week or Plot-Saving Technology Surprises. It feels like a knowable world, as much as any world can be knowable.

Of course, I would like to see them branch out just a little bit beyond the toaster-hunts and address the psychological impact of the near-demolition of the human race. I mean, there are fewer than 50,000 of them left, and yet whenever the Cylons are defeated everyone walks around like they don’t have a care in the world. Wouldn’t some human religious groups have tried to abolish birth control or at least encourage breeding? And speaking of breeding, why is everyone so sexually circumspect? You’re the last humans in the universe, people, and you’re in constant danger of annihilation; now is not the time to wonder whether you’re really ready for a relationship. The only ones getting any action out there are the Cylons and the humans they’re seducing.

Since my part of the original book-sharing experiment was so successful, I think Husband should have to go back and finish Pride and Prejudice What do you think?

So say we all.