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The Impoverished World Of Sci-Fi
Why reality is always so much more interesting than fiction
I first encountered science fiction at the age of almost-twelve, after leaving Africa for a damp stay in Britain. At that time the UK was transitioning from monochrome television broadcasts to color and due to a lack of domestic programming was enthusiastically buying the rights to show US TV shows. With actors wearing colorful smocks and an audience age-range from ten to forty, Star Trek was an obvious choice. And so I discovered pointy ears, the Enterprise, and… how nothing in the world of sci-fi made any sense.
I couldn’t understand how technology could exist to enable faster-than-light travel across vast distances, yet somehow wasn’t being used for many aspects of the Star Trek world. I didn’t understand how, if people could be transported nearly instantaneously from one place to another, the computational power required to accomplish this was insufficient to enable the ship’s computer to do anything other than perform at a crushingly slow rate when asked questions by the captain. How could such an advanced starship have a bridge that resembled a 20th century naval vessel? Why were the supposedly hi-tech devices carried by the cast so enormous, when obviously miniaturization had progresses sufficiently to enable unbelievable computational power and energy…
