Those of us who are science fiction fans and have been around for a few years have imagined the future differently and not as it happened but as it has become present.
Without going any further, we thought in our futuristic delusions that there would be space shuttles that would take us on a journey to other planets. And that it would be normal to stay on Venus or Mars and reach the other side of the moon. Thanks to technological advancements, we have imagined a happy world; an almost perfect world in which it would be possible to leave Earth and travel through space without much effort.
For the path to the stars has always been a recurring theme in novels of expectation ever since Jules Verne imagined a giant cannon aimed at the moon, where a projectile full of passengers would arrive. With few exceptions, the science fiction novels we read in our youth generally did not make predictions about the future. For example, no one would have thought that we would wear pocket computers like prosthetics, and that these same minicomputers would be used to read the newspaper, open the door of a hotel, or connect with the rest of the world.
More information
In this case, the exception was the writer Arthur C. Clarke, but not in a novel, but in an interview in which he anticipated the future that is now our present. Apart from this detailed document, there is little that is so certain. In any case, in a story by Stanislaw Lem with his otherworldly star traveler Ijon Tichy, we find uncontrollably floating space junk, something that isn’t talked about much and that might sound absurd. Unfortunately, the reality isn’t that crazy.
Because in space, especially in Earth orbit, we can find debris of different sizes, debris belonging to different space missions. No matter how much we fill space with satellites and future rendezvous points, the debris generated in our adventure will always be a problem to consider because, unlike what happens in Ijon Tichy’s novels, the stars are not space junk incinerators. A little over a year ago, from various points on the peninsula, we observed the night sky lit up by the toxic debris of a Chinese rocket. Things that happen.
As if that wasn’t enough, down here on Earth we have Point Nemo, named after Jules Verne’s famous novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is a point in the South Pacific where the Starship Graveyard is located and where Lovecraft imagined the residence of Cthulhu in the terrible city of R’lyeh, a nightmarish place that our cities will have little or nothing to envy from now on .
Going back to the beginning, those of us who have been science fiction fans for a few years imagined that the future would be built with positive values and not as a dystopian horror story. Our naivety at that time did not allow us to think negatively, and the crude grammar of the present was still far away. However, we still have time to turn to the future.
The stone axe It is a section in which Montero GlezWith a penchant for prose, he makes his special attack on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
You can follow THEME on Facebook, X and Instagram, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.