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    Monday, October 09, 2006

    Why Sci-Fi was born

    Valid or not, I wrote what follows as an automatic writing moment upon viewing the first episode of season three of Battlestar Galactica. Don't worry, I don't know what it all means either.

    It is with the greatest sense of the word homage that Battlestar Galactica looks to the reason Science Fiction was born. It takes the trials and indignations of the present, both personal and political and gives them voice so that they might sing their plight beyond the specifics of any country, culture, or personal dogma. It is to allow the feeble human brain a moment to step back and look at the circumstances of the presnt without the filter of religion, nationalism, or self and see fully, through fiction, the face that stands before us all in the mirror. For this I give them the greatest of humble accolades. Sure, there is some vestige and residue of human interference here, even writers of science fiction can only remove themselves so far, but I believe that they have done an admirable job of weaving the present with the future so that me might still have a chance to see tomorrow. It is what science fiction is for, to allow discussion of things present, masked in the fiction of a place much removed. I hope that it is successful, and begins much discussion. It is better to talk of things even if they are thinly disguised, rather than to let them go by as we turn our heads in shame to our own thoughts. Of course this opinion, like many more can easily be undone, should those in charge falter in their vision. So, consider this a secular prayer to the formless things that lurk between the atoms. May season three live up to the first episode, and may season four be so strong that it shakes the very foundations of fiction, spinning it into prescience of fact. I stand in awe not of what I believe to be something radically new, but of something old, that still wields such power.

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