SSpaceship courtesy of Mauricio Medina
| According to Thomas Richards, in his book, The Meaning of Star Trek,"science fiction works fill the void of our own knowledge by drawing on the historical experience of earth's own age of exploration." The first explorers like Magellan, Cortes, and Columbus, were invaders as well as explorers, providing the term, conquistadors. Historically, there is no such thing as exploration for exploration's sake. Exploration leads to empire, and empire leads to war. Edward Said states that "the development of empire was done at the expense and destruction of societies and culture through violence." Several science fiction works reflect on human transgression through the narrative of space exploration and conquest. |
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Science
fiction works, like Robert Heinlein's novel, Stranger in a Strange
Land, accounts a human exploration mission to observe if Earth
humans could survive on Mars. During the tail of the mission after
two generations have passed, they bring a hybrid (half human half
Martian) to earth. The delivery of the martian is aimed do comparative
studies on the hybrid's biological,psychological and emotional adaptation
to earth. This narrative expresses the displacement factor of aliens
during human involvement in space exploration. According
to Octavia Butler, science fiction gives writers of color an opportunity
to express the accounts, the emotions and the psychological factors
of forced "displacement". Such sci-fi narratives of forced
displacement relate the to the historical experiences of people
of color during slavery and labor migration. Click here for the
"alien "other " Are you interested in contributing, theory, reflections, images and fictional narratives related to this page? Click here Check out this site's list of links and other media resources |
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