Kevin Ahearn raises a...

Paean to Science Fiction

Science fiction, like humanity, is constantly in flux, trying to keep pace with our ever changing-world. Once there was a time when Man could only walk. Then we learned how to swim and then voyage across oceans and to fly and take off into outer space. Where and how far we will go is the stuff of science fiction.

Back in the day, science fiction could only be read. Then seen in films. In 1938 it was heard on the radio. Then television and now... and for what?

How fitting George Orwell would have found the 21st-century reincarnation of 1984, his novel first published in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been made into two films, for the radio twice, for television three times, has been presented as a play, and has another film version on the way set for a due date as early as 2009.

Not only did the novel give us a new way to think, but new language as well. Ridley Scott’s “1984” is the title of the TV commercial that launched the Apple Macintosh personal computer in the U.S. during the January 1984 Super Bowl. “You watched the game,” ran a full-page ad in the New York Times the next day, “but did you see the commercial?”

Well, it’s 1984 all over again. Not on TV or in movie theaters or in a book or on the radio but on the Internet. And it’s aimed squarely at the most powerful office on the planet. Take that, Big Sister!

If you do not yet understand the power of science fiction, you never will.

Kevin Ahearn

Copyright © 2007 by Kevin Ahearn

Your enthusiasm is well expressed and much appreciated, Kevin. And yes, I did see the commercial. But... “Big Sister”??

Don