Lost and SciFi

It is now the day after the season premier of Lost, and I am going to get into a little spoiler discussion. If you haven't seen it yet, then don't continue reading. To fill the rest of the page so you don't accidental read anything you don't want to, I present a turkey.
Ok, if you are still there, let me begin. There were two interesting articles that caught my attention on the web rounds today. The first was an article by guest blogger Steve Johnson on boingboing. He wrote about the complexity of Lost, and how it weaves disjoint storeys from the past, present, and future to convey emotion and drive the plot line. It has now taken this a step farther. The Lost writers have figured out a way to make it all seem sane, the island manipulates time "like a record that is skipping." The survivors are lost in time and literally lost. Johnson expresses my sentiments, that maybe, just maybe, things may come together, and we will get our questions answered. I just want to know why that damn statue had four toes. That is all I ask for, but this brings about larger issues about the genre of Lost.

Now that Lost is dealing with time travel, and they even created laws that govern it. There is nothing you can do to change the past or future. No matter what you do, the past has happened and the future will be. They describe it as a stream that is always moving forward. That seems to me very science fictiony. Which brings me to the next great article I read today.

Over at AMC, John Scalzi proposed a way to define science fiction and just plane ol' fiction. This comes about, it seems, because of one film in particular Repo Man.

... I know people who not only believe Repo Man is scifi, they will fight you on the matter. Seriously, man: The spittle will fling. I've seen it. I've been sprayed with it. It's not pretty.

In the earnest desire to avoid further spittle, allow me to suggest a refinement to the "percentage" theory of scifi, which is simply this: Whether a movie counts as science fiction depends on whether the science fiction elements are crucial to the plot. "Crucial to the plot" in this case means that if you pull out these elements, the story collapses; it literally cannot go on because the mechanisms that move it forwards no longer exist. If that's the case, it's science fiction. If your movie is still standing, then what you've got is another genre with some scifi thrown in for flavoring.

I ask, does Lost fit this bill? I mean, the island can manipulate time, and it seems it may be the key to figuring this all out. Lost also has many other scifi elements. For example, it has the crazy smoke monster and the button to save the world, but most of the action and plot revolve around being deserted on an island with a bunch of crazy "other" inhabitants. Then the plot changed to deal with the invaders, and then finally we move into time travel. Hmmm. It seems to me that this whole time travel thing could be the mcguffin that Scalzi refers to, but this is Lost we are talking about. When could we ever predict what will happened? It could just be, as Johnson suggest, that time distortion is the key to this whole crazy thing, and then again it very well couldn't. We will just have to see. Until then, I will watch and enjoy