Smile for Big Brother
Our lives are science fiction -- cool, isn't it?
      by Rachel Hyland

I could embark, here, on the history essay-type portion of the article, but I will forebear 'cause, hey, I don't know that stuff. And also, boring. So I'm not going to go into the Industrial Revolution, or the Cold War, or any other event in the time of man that people feel the need to capitalize. (And capitalize upon.) But I do know my science fiction, and so let's talk a little about that, shall we?

That is what we're here for, you know. Pay attention in the back. Sit up straight! Stop pulling that girl's hair, Bart! If you are quite finished... let us begin to continue.

Lois and Clark traveled through time with H.G. Wells. Really.

So, there was this Mary Shelley chick, right? She wrote Frankenstein, which led to real change in the field of literature. Steadily, throughout an indeterminate and sadly un-TV-blessed century, new ideas began to emerge about the place of mankind in the world, in the Solar System, in the galaxy. Not only was the truth out there, not only were we not alone, but we were only just beginning to realize it. The past cure-alls for every doubting thought -- religion and social structure -- began to buckle as questing souls gazed through the crystal balls of their imaginations, and saw what could be. What now is.

Names like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells come to mind, of course. Verne, with his eighty day trip around the world (obviously the progenitor of the Contiki tour) and his hell-spawned trip to the center of the Earth that led to a god-awful movie or two, and his trip to the moon. Following in the footsteps of other French visionaries like Balzac and Rabelais (really, I've researched this and everything), Verne foresaw a time when we would... well, do all kinds of science fiction-y stuff, like find lost lands, and battle scary stop-motion creatures, and travel into space).

Wells, meanwhile, came up with the whole traveling-through-time concept, so he's to blame for the Star Trek chronological headaches, the Doctor Who inaccuracies, and at least two rather entertaining episodes of Lois and Clark. (Speaking of Star Trek, I just want you to know... we won't be discussing its impact on the present any time soon. 'Cause that's a whole other article. And I think I've read it.) Other, earlier thinkers, like the Saint Sir Thomas Moore and the anti-Saint Jonathon Swift brought forth ideas of Science Fiction, but it was really Verne and Wells who captured their spirit, and began to influence an increasing circle of writers and playwrights to take flights of ultimate fantasy.

This must have been such an exciting time. New ideas, new boundaries, new boundaries broken. An age producing such literary landmarks as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, the collected ramblings of Arthur C. Clarke...

And then there were the Americans.

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