This I believe

I believe in the power of science fiction. Not just for its capacity to transform dreams into reality, but also for its power to bond together those who share visions of the future. For me, this is true for my relationship with my Dad. Some Fathers and sons bond over sports, or fishing, or hunting. My Dad and I do over Star Trek. We tried destruction derbies, monster truck rallies, and even a trip to Disney World, but one of my earliest and best memories wasn’t Mickey, but a Klingon Battle Cruiser menacingly de-cloaking in the Enterprise view screen.
Over the years, nearly every setting and situation becomes a galaxy far, far away for my Dad and I. When it’s snowing at night, we’re not driving along some dark street in Indiana, but going at war speed with stars whipping by. Both of us are thinking it, without needing to say a word. When we’re rummaging around in the car looking for a map, we unfailingly simultaneously quote Khan from Star Trek II, “The override, where’s the override?” We can’t say “two weeks” without sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall when he’s going through customs on Mars. A new foreign language phrase that neither of us have heard before becomes “klaatu verada nicto” from The Day the Earth Stood Still. When either of us google something we invariably preface it by writing “From an entry in the Encyclopedia Galactica,” quoting Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Nightmares become “monsters from the id!” vis-à-vis Forbidden Planet. Even my choice of expletives has been affected. I now use “Frak” from Battlestar Galactia more often than the colloquial alternative. The summation of these views of other universes has together created a private one for my Dad and I.
Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek, once said “Science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.” A lifetime of sci-fi has influenced more than just my relationship with my Dad, but also my hopes and aspirations for the future. I read Scientific American, am hooked on Nova, and grab the Science Times even before the comics. My Masters dissertation was on property rights in outer space. I’m now in law school, but my first summer job will be working at the NASA Office of General Counsel. Sci-fi may have made me into a nerd, but it also has continued to be a source of joy for my family, and has made me an optimist while allowing me to think critically about the perils of technology. Thank you to those authors who have shared their visions – the world, and my family, are better for it. As Tennyson said, “For I dipped into the future, far as human eyes could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be.”