Exploration through Science Fiction

Ok, so I admit it.  I’m a huge science fiction fan.  I got hooked in college with Star Trek:  The Next Generation TV series, and then went on to read the entire set of fiction novels that were based on the show.  I love other science fiction, too.  Movies from The Terminator to The Matrix have been favorites, as well as science fiction authors such as Heinlein.  One of these days, maybe I’ll even get around to writing a Latina science fiction series.  If anyone knows of one, please let me know asap!

Aside from being a dork (with which I’m totally comfortable, by the way), why do I love sci-fi so much?  Well, it allows me to consider, along with the writer(s) of the story, what could or might happen in the future and how we humans might react to it.  The format allows us to contemplate human questions that can be difficult to address head on in a context that is less threatening (it’s just fiction, right?).  And it asks us to confront possible outcomes when we so often get caught up in what science allows us to do, without considering the down side.

Remember the Aliens movie?  What a metaphor for how the monster can come out and ‘bite us’ when we are so intent on research that we are not willing to accept not just the potential for destruction but the destructive nature of the beast itself.  And how many lives are we willing to sacrifice once we’ve determined that the monster will keep on killing and not stop simply for the opportunity to ‘learn more’?  [If anyone’s not with me, go watch the movies first, then come back.  :)]

That’s the amazing thing about science ‘fiction’ is that it allows us to play with the possibilities in our minds, and make comparisons to the everyday.  And then, of course, we joke about how so much of our everyday life is like true science fiction because we could not have imagined it even five to ten years ago.

I encourage you to think about it and to see in your individual world how science affects your life, what the possibilities are for the future (both positive and negative) and how the exploration of science is truly all around you — even if only in science fiction!  And if you want to send me your sci-fi recommendations, I’d love those, too…