I can’t imagine a world without science fiction. I am well aware that many of the greater expanses of our known universe were moved by arrogance and greed. We do know now that Leif Erikson reached Newfoundland long before Columbus did, precisely thousand years ago now. But we also know that he was driven by murder and exile. We know that Columbus was another pawn in the expansive push of Isabel the Catholic Queen and her husband Fernando II of Aragon, to “reconquest” the Spanish peninsula by expelling the muslims there settled, enterprise that needed new resources and trade routes. What I do not know is how come that C. Clarke predicted the extensive use of satellital communication, that Heinlein wrote so much about the internet, long before Berners-Lee was even thinking about http’s and URL, or that Asimov exposed the many contradictions inherent to our increasing use of Artificial Intelligence back in the fifties. Why would it be that even Cyrano de Bergerac wrote about traveling to the moon? I wonder, are there more powerful exposes of the weaknesses of our political and consumerist societies than 1984, or A Brave New World? How comes that Dune is one of the most promising books ever written on the strive against desertification and the abuse that extractive industries bring along, meanwhile joining traits from both Arabic and Hebrew peoples as the only possibly successful driver of change? I really can’t imagine a world without Science Fiction.
Yet with all this, I have never be a fan of William Shatner, or of Star Trek.
And that combination leaves me, nowadays, in a bit of a disadvantaged position to comment the news. I do feel tempted to just echo Takei, another star of Star Trek, when saying that Shatner “was boldly going where other people have gone before”. Indeed, there is something embarrassing, almost disgusting in seeing ultra-rich people, or old actors, being the pioneers of space. What would be next? Schwarzenegger in Mars? All this is actually hard on me, a leftie committed and active in the green party. Should I actually echo the comments of his majesty The Duke of Cambridge? “great brains and minds should be trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live".
Actually, I don’t think so.
Let alone the huge hypocrisy of the duke at trying to place himself as a green activist. Nobody should expect anything else from royalty, ignorance and hypocrisy in equal parts. Yes, half of that statement is plain ignorant. We do need to find other worlds. Anything else is simply hubris, from the other kind.
There is no doubt that our kind have dirtied and destroyed the world that we live in. There is quite some doubt if we would be ever be able to fix it, though. But it doesn’t really matter if the world is “fixable” back to any meaningful, or scientifically sound, ecological standard . The successes that we have had, the recovery of some fisheries, the coming back of wolves and bears, even storks, the people busy nursing coral reefs, those and many others are developments that should inspire us all. But it can not blind us to what Malthus, long time ago already, noticed.
We are not becoming less, ever.
And there will be a moment when we will not fit anymore in our good old planet Earth. To say otherwise is to close our eyes to one of our most powerful impulses, reproduce. Is closing our eyes to our ever increasing standards of child survival, of welfare. I really hope that when the starships can carry us there, beyond, we would have learn some ecology, I really hope that we will not leave behind a wasted and consumed desert. Such I hope. What I have no doubt whatsoever is that we will migrate, again.
To the stars.