Welcome To The Future

Well met, my friends-to-be, in time I may tell you more of my personal story, but for now I need to prove quickly interesting.

Science Fiction needs to be improved. Person the starships! Bring out the one shot-at-a-time, unguided, dangerously explosive laser blasters! Obey the paternal king's orders as we all march into battle without breaking a sweat. And so on, and so on it goes.

Do you have any idea how big a Solar System is? Well, ok, you do have such knowledge. We look like the earliest explorers who claimed the whole of an Ocean while standing in the waves on this immensity's edge.

Am I going to trade in a fully automatic rifle with a under-the-barrel grenade launcher for a semi-automatic pistol? Especially one that if a lucky shot hit the energy cell would turn me into a hot shower mist? Are our children more stupid than we?

It's been said many times; why does Science Fiction, the literature of the future, have kings and feudal systems?

If you were the U.S., and could decide individually for us collectively, then what five bases would you establish in the Sol System? How would they justify their existance? How would three of them expand? Pick two other nations for this as well.

But do not get too enthused unless you are really having fun. My desire is not to load you up with more homework for your already aching back to bear.

In this order as follows for the U.S.:
1. Luna Base established. Powersats set up. Abundant electrical power makes private space orbit-to-surface and back taxi's possible. Electrical overheating of the planet makes air conditioning the planet a neccessity.
2. Asteroid Prospectors arrive. Start flinging rocks into Earth orbit. The Dinokiller Protection Tax finances multiple national SDI systems.
3. Sunside Roving Base begins studying Mercury and the Sun. A monastery is added.
4. Marshome built.
5. Titan robo-mines opened.

How would you improve the guns we have? If people shift over to a brand new system it will have to be very good to overcome resistance. What's much better than the guided, no-kick, explosive, five hundred rounds per minute pocket Uzi of 2050? How will that change society?

Get rid of kings, nobles, corporate boards, world dictators, and what have you? Maybe a New England Town Meeting? Maybe you get status points by how much you contribute, and then you can spend thes points to vote on the video/written forums of the future? I'm not sure you'll be able to come up with something new, but try to create complexity, and avoid the more common cliches.

Eric R. Ashley