We Need More Utopian Sci-Fi

thegamer.com:

I can’t believe there was once a time when we imagined what the future would look like, and it looked pretty good. Growing up with the likes of Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix, and hell, even WALL-E, made it pretty difficult to see our growing reliance on technology as a positive thing. And real life didn’t help much either. No matter where you look, technology is increasingly being developed with capital in mind, not our own happiness and comfort.

So it’s understandable why sci-fi is a reflection of this reality. Gone are the dreams of flying cars and replicating food; we’re too busy grappling with space capitalism and android racism. And in fairness, we probably shouldn’t be messing about with synthetic life when we haven’t learned to respect organics yet. We’re not ready for Commander Data, we’d have too many Ex Machina scenarios play out.

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We can’t even escape our problems in space anymore. Back in 1969, my dad’s primary school huddled around a TV to watch the moon landing. I mean, yeah, it was a dick measuring contest with the USSR, but it felt like a celebration of humanity. Fast forward six decades later, and the dick measuring contest only has a handful of contestants - divorced billionaires. CEOs who look and act like sci-fi villains, and openly want to privatise space travel, gating it off to the elite while we burn on the planet they ruined.

But it wasn’t always like this. Star Trek is a near timeless gem, but certainly not because of its visuals and often dodgy approach to sensitive subjects in its earlier series. No, it’s timeless because it’s unapologetically optimistic about the future, and shows us that another way is possible. It shows