Yesterday was a pretty amazing day, one that gives me a lot of hope for the future of the human race. For one, Curiosity landed on Mars, and even though there wasn’t a lot to see, it did make for some exciting spectacle. Watching the video feed from NASA’s JPL was full of intensity, as they would applaud every minor success. But that’s not the only thing: Oscar Pistorius ran in the Olympic semi-finals in the Men’s 400m. He may not have won, but he ran.
Just let that really sink into your brain: In 24 hours*, we landed a robot science lab on Mars AND a man with no legs ran in the Olympics.
That’s pretty damn amazing, what we– the collective we of humanity– can achieve.
Of course, being a writer– especially a SF/F one– this puts me in the mind of Future Worldbuilding. What can we achieve, what can’t we achieve, and where are we going to go? When I’ve been crafting a Space Opera Setting, one of my goals was to maintain a certain degree of plausibility.**
So, for the rest of August, it will be Future Worldbuilding Month, with a specific focus on Space Opera. I’ll talk some about my own ideas, compare some to my strong points of inspiration.***
So let’s look to the future.
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*- I’m pretty sure they were within the same 24 hour period, but it could have been a few hours more apart than that. But close enough.
**- In as much as a setting with aliens and FTL travel can be plausible.
***- Including what are, in my mind, the five defining series of Televised Space Opera: Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. We’ll get into all of those.