Kevin Ahean says...

Yes, Virginia, science fiction does exist

Francis P. Church’s editorial in the New York Sun of September 21, 1897 “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” is borrowed and reimagined by Kevin Ahearn for our own times.

Dear Editor:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no science fiction, that all that’s left of what used to be are tired remakes, lame reimaginings, derivative novels and endless series. Papa says, “If you see it in Bewildering Stories, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there science fiction?”

Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West Ninety-fifth Street

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is science fiction. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no science fiction! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in science fiction! You might as well believe there is no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe or that starships will never exceed the speed of light! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all the dreary movies exploiting what science fiction had once been, but even if you did not see science fiction in its purest original form, what would that prove?

Nobody sees science fiction as if it were a thing. It is something you feel, a power that makes you think, wonder and imagine. Where does the future of humanity lie? Will we be forever bound to Earth or will we one day go to the stars? What promise does tomorrow’s technology hold? Do calamity and catastrophe await us if we refuse to heed the warnings of science fiction?

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see androids dancing on the lawn or discover a time machine in your kitchen? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else more real and abiding.

No science fiction? Thank God, science fiction lives, and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, science fiction will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.