98 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
98 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
from TIME Magazine, April 18, 1988
|
|
inside front cover
|
|
|
|
Special Advertising Section
|
|
|
|
A Letter To The Next Generation
|
|
From Gene Roddenberry
|
|
the creator of STAR TREK
|
|
|
|
Text copyright (c) 1988 by Gene Roddenberry and shamelessly reprinted here
|
|
without permission. I suspect Gene won't mind, given the context.
|
|
|
|
"Good wishes from a television dramatist who lived a hundred years before
|
|
your time. I create science fiction tales set in your 21st century and
|
|
beyond for television and movie audiences. These are tales which reflect the
|
|
affection and optimism I have for the human creature. I welcome this
|
|
opportunity to share my perspectives with you.
|
|
|
|
"For many living now, today is a time of fear and even despair. Some
|
|
believe that life has become too complex for us. Or too artificial. Or that
|
|
this era's nuclear missles, its waves of hysterical nationalism and
|
|
quarreling superstitions, perhaps mean a violent end for the human creature,
|
|
as soon as the close of our present century.
|
|
|
|
"I believe the complete opposite to be true. The present tumult in our
|
|
world is the natural and understandable result of a vigorous intelligence
|
|
moving out of the savagery of our life form's childhood. Instead of
|
|
humanity's demise, our era seems to be filled with evidence that we were
|
|
meant to survive and evolve much further.
|
|
|
|
"For example, a recent flood of remarkable human happenings includes a
|
|
primal invention as revolutionary as the discovery of fire, the wheel, and
|
|
language. We call it the COMPUTER, an astonishing device which handles
|
|
information at near-light speed and in ways suggests humanity has been gifted
|
|
with the perfect servant. Next, largely because of the computer, we have
|
|
begun to recognize that the human brain is an equally astonishing device
|
|
whose TEN BILLION or so neurons appear to interconnect into a potential of
|
|
TRILLIONS of thought patterns. Rather than being unable to handle the
|
|
complexities of today, the combination of computer and brain appears to be
|
|
doubling human knowledge every six or seven years, leading us toward
|
|
knowledge and ability our ancestors would have considered godlike.
|
|
|
|
"Which means that the human future is not for the fainthearted. The
|
|
most dramatic happening in our era has been our first efforts to move out
|
|
from our home planet. Our first moon visits are remarkably similar to the
|
|
early sailing craft that visited the American New World. Bold children both!
|
|
Those early sea voyagers found a wilderness as forbidding to them as the
|
|
moon's landscape seemed to us much later on.
|
|
|
|
"I find it equally remarkable that, so far, no other intelligent
|
|
life-forms seem to exist on those other worlds overhead. In fact, everything
|
|
about our sun and its planets proclaims 'RESERVED FOR HUMANITY.' What a
|
|
lovely educational arrangement for the offspring of our fertile Earth-egg
|
|
planet! Having left childhood behind as we move out from our home planet,
|
|
humanity is ready for the stretching and learning of adolescence.
|
|
|
|
"What better place to evolve into adulthood than in our own solar
|
|
system? There exists, out in our own 'backyard', an incredible treasure
|
|
house of eight other planets, plus dozens of moons and other raw
|
|
material--plus the almost inexhaustible energy of our hydrogen furnace sun
|
|
with which to shape those materials to our needs.
|
|
|
|
"All of which makes it interesting that the galaxy's other stars are,
|
|
for now, inconceivably distant. Even traveling at light speed, most range
|
|
from thousands to millions of years away. In its own way, this fact is as
|
|
heartening as the apparent absence of other intelligent life on the worlds
|
|
circling our own star. If our universe is a gigantic life- and
|
|
intelligence-creating machine as some believe, what better way of protecting
|
|
life forms than a system of natural laws which protects them from one another
|
|
until they become adult and capable of understanding the master plan?
|
|
|
|
"One obstacle to adulthood needs to be solved immediately: We must
|
|
learn not just to accept differences between ourselves and our ideas, but to
|
|
enthusiastically welcome and enjoy them. Diversity contains as many
|
|
treasures as those waiting for us on other worlds. We will find it
|
|
impossible to fear diversity and to enter the future at the same time.
|
|
|
|
"If the future is not for the fainthearted, it is even more certainly
|
|
not for the cowardly. One of the saddest spectacles of our time is to watch
|
|
the leaders of Earth's nations meeting together clumsily and embarrassedly
|
|
exchanging slogans containing grains of friendship and understanding, yet
|
|
fearful that this might constitute some awful blasphemy. Those who insist
|
|
theirs is the only correct government or economic system deserve the same
|
|
contempt as those who insist that they have the only true God.
|
|
|
|
As I began by saying, I am a television dramatist who lived many years
|
|
before your time, and I realize that the human future will be infinitely more
|
|
complex than anything I am able to imagine. I hope, however, that by your
|
|
time some small truths will be found in the rough sketch of tomorrow that I
|
|
offer here. If not, at least you may find this a pleasant and entertaining
|
|
tale."
|
|
|
|
/s/ Gene Roddenberry
|
|
|
|
Explanatory Note: "In 'Open Forum' sponsored by Volkswagen prominent figures
|
|
in American culture pass on their ideas and views to those who'll inherit the
|
|
earth...100 years from now. Second in a series."n American culture pass on their ideas and views to those who'll inherit the
|
|
earth...100 years from now. Second in a seri |