Remembering the summer after i graduated from
high school, when i was engrossed in the most challenging
mathematical calculation i ever attempted: to integrate
the formulas of the Lorentz-FitzGerald Effect (which i
could only ever find in most skeletal form in any reference
book), so i could calculate directly the subjective &
objective travel times of relativistic acceleration (such
as Carl Sagan, for example, gives in several of his works,
in graphic format). I covered page after page with
algebraic transformations of the basic calculus equation;
it was just a little bit beyond me, & the tantalizing
frustration of it was exquisite. Finally i put it into a form
that i could use, & immediately set out to calculate
the travel times to all my favorite stars. This information
which seemed so important at the time, i have never
found any use for.
   And now i think the whole genre of
humans travelling to other planets & interacting with alien
intelligences, should be recognized as (1) a metaphor
for colonialism, & (2 a culdesac for storytelling. We,
who hardly can recognize the Other in humans who are
very much different from us, & not at all in such
highly intelligent species as chimpanzees, elephants,
& the higher cetaceans, do not deserve to meet
anything stranger; & the only story of it that could
be told, is the same tragedy of Earth. I see only two
fruitful branches of scifi to further explore (& perhaps
a third, as yet dimly adumbrated--): descriptions of
the near future that actually take account of such
necessary debacles as global warming, & hence help
acclimate us to beginning to construct some non-oblivious
response; & descriptions of hypothetical nonhuman
cultures, such that other modes of being can be
explored in a way that shows us how arbitrary our
own is; lastly, something that J G Ballard in an
illuminating if offhand remark, has pointed the way
to; "...I'd like to see more psycho-literary ideas [in
scifi], ...synthetic psychologies and space-times,
more of the sombre half-worlds glimpsed in the
paintings of schizophrenics..." --This latter, though,
might be thought of as what has always been the
province of poetry: mystification.