From This Moment Into Infinity...

I get this feeling whenever I read science-fiction, or watch a science-fiction film, that I am looking into the inner workings of my own humanity. This feeling much resembles looking at one's toes and raising one's gaze till it meets the horizon. There's this intense draw when you see the beyond, especially when your aware of your own position in relation.

My imaginings in this genre have always taken me to the edges of known perception and driven questions out of me that aren't easily, or usually, driven. It's as if I can zoom from views of nuclear particles out to the greatest distances of the edges of the known universe and back again. In this journey of realization not only am I able to see the shapes, forms, and substances for what they truly are, I am also capable of greater imagining with questions that look for what is not seen between the layers of existence. Raised in a world of darkness would we think to question the absence of light?

Such a speculative and often dismissed genre, science-fiction provides a vehicle like no other which deepens the potential and possibility for present and future discovery. If we do not ask of the absence how shall we react when we are made aware of the presence?

I have always been a fan of this section of fiction and, for as far distant as I can figure, I will always be. Looking beyond the simplistic, silliness of certain lighter levels of the genre, into the heart of the questions its greatest writers and works ask, I can see the whole of our potential. That is a truly splendid thing indeed.