To Boldly Go

“Science fiction is an existential metaphor. It allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said: ‘Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.’ ” -Stargate Season 10 Episode 6

I was binge watching shows as one does, this one happened to be Stargate SG-1, and at the end of the episode, a character says this quote. It’s alway been in the back of my head since then, and when a sci-fi prompt was given, this memory resurfaced. I feel that there’s no better or more concise way to explain what science fiction is, or what it does to us when we watch it. All the better that it came from a sci-fi show itself, quoting the most renowned science fiction writer.

Science fiction, compared to other genres, is the most versatile medium to get across a point that can either be good or bad. It can be a warning or encouragement to its audience. It inspires and invigorates. It shows viewpoint which may be different than your own, and opens your eyes to them. It teaches morality. It’s how stories are told about these great explorers and pioneers, members of a great civilization capable of awesome and incredible things, and how they still share the same conflicts and predicaments which plague us today. Science fiction shows us how our problems are something that cannot be solved as easily as faster than light travel.

I’m always amazed when I watch an episode of Star Trek, TNG or whatever it is, and the moral conflict of the plot is applicable to current events. And I’ve always wondered why, as a genre, science fiction seems to be a recent development in literature. That’s when I realize that science fiction isn’t a recent development. These stories have been told since time immemorial, from the time of the Greeks with Jason and the Argonauts, and with Kepler’s Somnium, Lucian’s A True Story, Plutarch’s The Face on the Moon. These stories all sought to inspire and enlighten, to critique and analyze, just as contemporary science fiction does. We just don’t realize this because they’ve faded from our sphere of awareness. Perhaps thousands more stories that blinked in and out as our condition, the human condition, advanced. Science fiction stories are recycled, and revised, characters reconsidered and rewrote, as we advance and come to know more about our place in the universe, and more about ourselves and who we are.

There will probably come a time when the works of Asimov and countless other dreamers will fade from the literary sphere, and it won’t be because they’re forgotten, but because we’ve solved the issues that they brought up, just as we solved the issues that intrigued and worried the authors of yore. Science fiction takes on a timeless form as long as humanity remains what it is.