Is Space Actually the Final Frontier?
When I was little, I begged my mom to buy me this small, portable TV for my room because, as she recalled, it reminded me of Star Trek. Mind you, this was before Star Wars ever came out, so I must have been six or seven at the time. Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, “What parent allows the child to have their own TV at that age? Certainly, that would be a distraction from schoolwork and family time,” and so forth. And you wouldn’t be wrong. It was.
But that wagon train to the stars had already left.
Many of my earliest memories involved watching TV, due to my parents working and running a ministry. They were often hosting bible studies and television had become the great babysitter in that era. I connected quickly to shows like Star Trek, The Addams Family, The Six-Million Dollar Man, and Saturday afternoon pulp serials. I knew more about television than a TV guide, and I certainly knew more about entertainment than I did my history, math, or science lessons.
Star Wars, and all the phenomenon that came with it, hit when I was nine years old. It just took me not just to the future, but to a galaxy far, far away. I studied the industry and always wanted to be a part of it. Now, I became interested in science and the stars and dreamed of traveling to them one day. None of these flights of fancy, such as space travel, or even making movies, has come to pass…yet (knock on the pseudo wood of my desk). Instead, I wound up becoming an author and in doing so, understood for the first time that Gene Roddenberry lied to me, all those years ago.
Space was not the final frontier.
“What?” says the disbelieving reader. “Gene loved us and gave us a grand design for the future that involved exploring the galaxy in perfect harmony with one another.”
Yes, I know no one talks like that, and even if they did, they’re not wrong there, either. He did. I’d never besmirch the honored name of Roddenberry especially in print, where Paramount could see it. No, I’m only talking about the concept of there ever being a final frontier.
Merriam-Webster’s second definition of the word “frontier” is the one we most think of: a region that forms the margin of settled or developed territory, as in the western frontier. And while there are several other definitions, the one I tend to think most relevant to science fiction is the last: a new field for exploitative or developmental activity.
“Why this one?” you may ask. Well, because we can look at space exploration as just settling unexplored territories but, in truth, it’s so much more. Space is the realm of God or The Creators or the theoretic physicist looking for an opportunity to turn a theory into a fact. And not just one theory, but all of them.
In my novel She Murdered Me with Science (Wordfire Press, 2016), I use a quote from the philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.” This is one of my favorite quotes about science. And whether you believe in a divine being or not, the quote hits home. There must always be new things to explore. We’ve seen it in recent fiction and film and television. We can’t just have space exploration in science fiction anymore. No, we must also add in time travel, alternate worlds, microcosmic dimensions, or any one of an infinite number of concepts. And explore them, we must. For even if we do someday have the ability to travel the entire universe, what would we do then? Would we then know the mind of God? Would we have all the answers?
No, we would just have new questions, new realities to dream up. We can never stop exploring, never find the actual final frontier. Because as Goethe said, we would be bored out of our evolved-lovin’ minds.
Here in these pages are eleven stories about exploring the penultimate frontier. Much like the frontiers of the past, these stories are filled with settlers overcoming adversity, rule breakers and justice seekers, the discovery of new creatures, and previously unexplored scientific anomalies. They might not contain any answers to the great unknowns waiting out there for us, but maybe they’ll help us ask new questions in preparation for that day we finally leave the shackles of Earth.
I may never get to physically journey to the stars, but these authors have taken me to places I’d never read about before.
And that’s exciting enough for me.
For now.
D.B.
12.19.20