We Dare to Boldly Go

Collin McClelland
Norfolk State University

Humanity has always feared the unknown. History shows horror stories of how
the dark and unlit world could consume you. But there is a group of thinkers, writer, and

producers who created a genre that spurred a new generation of thinkers. Science Fiction
has been the inspiration for explorers, new ideas, and new technologies to be birthed in
our world.

Beginning as far back as the 2nd century, Science Fiction, or Sci-Fi, has danced the
fine line of fantasy and plausible reality for centuries. This ability of the genre to take
actual scientific facts and blends them with the fantastic possibilities of our imaginations
have inspired thinkers, inventors, students, and scientists for centuries. In this genre we,
as an existential thinking element, are free to roam and explore the endless infinite of
what reality can or will be.

This genre has spurred advancements I n technology that seemed utterly

impossible merely years before the creation of the invention. The cell phone had its origin
inspired by the Communicator, the Star Trek gadget that allowed communication to
others across distances radio could not possible reach. The organ 3D printer and Neurallinked Prostatic Limb were inspired by the Star Wars movies. Medical transplants
actually were studied after Marry Shelleys Frankenstein was published. The comic book,
X-men inspired a revolutionary science in gene therapy that can cause spontaneous limb
regeneration. These are some examples of how Sci-Fi asked us to consider reality and to
question the possibilities that we have come to accept in the main stream.

In our class we were asked a simple task. We were to adopt the post-modern view
of thinking. In this mindset, we are charged to ask why and to not accept truths but to

experiment and expand on truths to create an exponential growth of human knowledge.

Mankind are not infallible; and their truths, for the most part are only half-truths; that
unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite
opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good (Arroyo, A.T., 60). This
statement rings true to the Sci-Fi spirit of seeing new and different things not as a
negative or evil entity, rather we are to embrace change, new truths, and new facts to
create and grow our minds in a positive way. To expand our understanding and to bring to
light new worlds of ideas and truths is the essence of Sci-Fi.

Arroyos work stated, God told us What to do not How to do it (Arroyo, 3).
Science fiction charges us with the same question. We are to actively seek the how to our
whys. This genre has brought us as a race to an enlightened state of always questioning
what is true, and devising new theories on uncharted thoughts and territory. We, as
Captain Jean-Luke Piccard says, Boldly go where no man has gone before

References
Arroyo, Andrew T. "Chapter 1: Selections from Seeds of Maturity." Ideas and Their
Influences. Second ed. S.l.: Kendall Hunt, 2012. 3. Print.
Arroyo, Andrew T. "Chapter 3: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being."
Ideas and Their Influences. Second ed. S.l.: Kendall Hunt, 2012. 60. Print.
"Discovery Channel." Sci-Fi Season. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/sci-fi-season-sci-fi-shows/about/how-techieschanged-the-world/>.
"Science Fiction." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction#History>.