Science Fiction

Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before

Hi.

I know it's been a while since I've written a blog post. It's just that I have been SO SO busy with facebook my exams. I shall definitely update my blog more frequently from now on. (I promise)

Anyway, that's enough of my excuses. Now, on to the main topic of this blog : 

Science Fiction. (I'm already salivating)

A couple of weeks ago, I started reading my first Isaac Asimov novel: 'The Caves of Steel', part of his series on robots. (Yes, I know - I started reading Asimov pretty late in life - I'm disgusted with myself too. Somehow I never came around to reading his work, which is surprising, since I ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO READ.)

As expected, I loved it. It bound me in a web of literary fantasy. It floored me. It left me craving for more. I loved how he managed to integrate robots into human society (although there were a few bumps along the way) and how his characters literally came to life. As science fiction, it was every bit as exciting as it promised to be.

However, what amazed me most was how a writer in the 1940's and 50's could have possibly foreseen a future so far ahead and so far removed from his time! The more I thought about it, the more mind - blowingly   (pardon me, grammar Nazi's) amazing it seemed. In his time there were no personal computers, no mobile phones, manned spacecraft had not yet been launched. And yet there was this man - a remarkable individual possessing powerful foresight. You could say he was the da Vinci of his time.

Asimov himself believed that his most enduring contributions would not be his work as a biochemist or the textbooks on science that he wrote, rather his famous Three Laws of Robotics. They boggled people's minds. They gained a cult following of their own. Such was the 'scientific imagination' of Isaac Asimov.

(For those unacquainted with Asimov's 3 laws of robotics, here they are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey all orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the 1st law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st or the 2nd law.)

Another man who had similar visionary thinking was Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. His brainchild elevated him to the status of international icon. As a die-hard Star Trek fan myself, I have a great deal of respect for the man. In the 1960's, when technology was still primitive by today's standards, Gene Roddenberry envisioned phasers, the warp drive, a galactic federation of planets and an era when man's primary aim was not the accumulation of wealth, but the expansion of his knowledge and preservation of galactic peace!

The 3 heroes of the original Star Trek series 

Granted, the special effects seen on the original Star Trek series might seem outdated compared to the visual feast that is Avatar or the Transformers movies, but what it lacked it graphics it made up for in ideas and imagination. The technology shown in Star Trek - laser guns, spacecraft travelling faster than light, teleportation, is technology that we might see after hundreds of years (if at all we do obtain it)! American physicist Michio Kaku credits Star Trek with being one of the factors that got him interested in science in the 1st place. In his books 'Visions' and 'Physics of the Impossible' he explains how the technology seen on Star Trek might one day become reality.

Science fiction might one day become reality. (How I ache for that day!) What seems like exaggerated imagination today might become commonplace many years from now. What shouldn't change, however, is man's thirst for achieving the impossible. The world needs more Asimovs and Roddenberries if we are to convert science fiction into scientific fact. 

The world needs its thinkers. But what it needs even more is its dreamers. 

Live long and prosper.