Then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius."
Top song of 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In," recorded by the 5th Dimension
From Sputnik's Child, Fred Ledley, Book One: The Age of Aquarius, page seven
It's not the first historical fiction I've read. So far, I find it immensely enjoyable.
In a previous post, I referred to the CNN special "Black in America" (and myself) as Sputnik's Children.
I read this online article in Scientific American: Rethinking the Dream of Human Spaceflight, by Laurence M. Krauss, a self-identified Sputnik Child. One of the many commentaries to the article said this:
As perhaps found in science fiction, the space exploration research should focus not only on adapting space to people, i.e. building more and more complex devices to protect the fragile earthy man from the killing forces of a hostile universe, but rather adapting him to these forces. Is this only fiction? Perhaps, for now. But look at ocean exploration - to resist the killing pressure of the environment, people do not only build submarines and hard costumes to protect the man, but also fill his lungs and cavities with gases at the same pressure as the one of the surrounding environment so that he is "like fish in the water". What else is this if not adapting man to the environment, as opposed to the much more expensive and inefficient (restricted movement, for instance) adapting of environment to man.
There will be significant engineering to adapt Homo sapiens to the crushing forces and intense radiation of manned spaceflight, as the commentator elucidates. Less technical, I don't see an effort to stir the imagination, influence the Zeitgeist to adapt "people to space."
Here's a list of science fiction movies in the 1960s, as well as television through the 60s and 70s. Decidedly mono cultural, only Star Trek ventured to where "no man had gone before": a diverse cast and television's first interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura (and to be fair, the first suggested inter species kiss between Commander Spock and Nurse Chapel).
NPR's list of the top 100 science fiction for 2011 does not include Octavia Butler, or any other speculative fiction writers of color. I'm not hearing people talk about books they've read, prompting me to join a science fiction fan and writers' group in Poughkeepsie. The comment/category of being a part of "geek culture" intrigued me.
I rarely see any shows on the Syfy Channel or even the Science Channel that captures interest over the latest contestants on Dancing With the Stars or American Idol.
We are Aquarius at noonday: well past the dawn, we have no ideological nation-state dragons to slay. We have accepted a settling of cultural isolation; a de facto segregation based on financial attainment. As long as we can all afford the same mobile phones and associated apps, we're fine with remaining in our programmed, designated "place" in society, oblivious to others outside of our "friend" listings. Our imaginations are planned and monitored in million player online fantasies and our "likes" that saps us of rest, leisure reading time, and paradoxically the will to learn the technology that created it to enhance, better and advance it or ourselves.
Near homogeneous nations push the envelop of scientific and engineering advancement because even though they had in their histories internal wars, but no Dred Scott, Jim Crow, Civil or Voting Rights battles. Their politics is not bereft of moderates: since they never claimed to support democracy, their officials are despots with the concentration of wealth at their disposal to remain in power, and ours are fundraisers extraordinaire, too afraid to decide, else "the base" and benefactors will cease the flow of money into their reelection coffers. Any science that has the temerity (italics mine) to associate itself with the words "theory of" (fill in the blank) is questioned publicly for maximum political gain. Thus far, the Pythagorean Theorem has not proven so controversial.
Before you can adapt space to people, you must have a collective national will that adapts the thinking beyond reality television and self-centered pursuits to a vision going forward, reflected and expressed even in our forms of entertainment and political processes.
Before you can adapt space to people, you must have a collective national will that adapts the thinking beyond reality television and self-centered pursuits to a vision going forward, reflected and expressed even in our forms of entertainment and political processes.
We are Aquarius at noonday: winter solstice is days away.
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