Science Fiction

So I was thinking a bit yesterday, since watching the live feed of the Curiosity landing and being so totally enamored with it, about what people, other people, really think when they see something like that. It got me thinking about science fiction, and for some reason I began to see it in something of a different light.

I never thought of science fiction in any way really different from the way I view fantasy. It was always just a way to escape the real world for me. A way to visualize and immerse myself in the way things weren’t.

But that’s definately not the point of science fiction at all, and I don’t know why it took me so long to realize it. You’d think, being me, that I would have come across this mode of thinking a long time ago, but I didn’t. It makes me feel a little silly.

Science fiction is the artistic visualization of the way things could be. The artistic visualization of the way things might someday be.

Now that is a very interesting thought indeed, and I have an entirely new-found appreciation for the genre. I am the type of person who reads books in order to escape reality. I very rarely think about why other people read the same genre, or the reasons that attract them in a real world sense.

Watching the live feed of the Curiosity landing and seeing the first pictures it took of Mars has changed that for me where science fiction is concerned. Twenty seven thousand people tuned in just to the feed I was watching, and it was so funny sitting at my computer while mission control were all sitting at theirs, holding their breath, cheering for every step that was successfully completed. When Curiosity finally touched down, the explosion of joy was very moving. Some of the people in mission control even started to cry because they were so happy.

And it hit me then that these are the steps humanity is taking to try and make science fiction into science fact. They are small steps in the grand scheme of things, but steps forward none-the-less. Science fiction is the writer’s expression of how we think, or sometimes hope, things will be someday. Not in the near future certainly, but maybe our children’s children’s children will know what it’s like to visit another planet, or maybe they’ll see the invention of something akin to a warp drive.

Space is very truly the final frontier for the human race. There is no where else on earth to go for us any more, so if we are to survive, I am certain it’s going to be by colonizing other planets. Something they talked about when talking about this current rover mission to Mars. It’s paving the way for the first humans to travel there.

And now all I can do is wonder what kind of story I can offer to the genre. I have an interesting idea that I’ve worked on for some time, but never in any seriousness. I pulled it up last night and wrote about two pages on it. I think I’ll try to keep up the momentum.