En Columbia, and the Dreams of Science Fiction Gary Westfahl argumenta que sí:
We must conquer space because science fiction has told us to.
We must conquer space because that is the way science fiction said it was going to be. After beginning with small steps into Earth orbit, we must build space stations, travel to the Moon, Mars, and other nearby planets, and set up human colonies wherever we go ? a process that science fiction writers in the 1950s and 1960s thought we would complete well before the year 2001. Then, we must ready ourselves for ventures into interstellar space, encounters with alien life, and the formation of a galaxy-spanning Federation of Planets. We must conquer space so that our children can be Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and so that our great-grandchildren can be Captain Kirk.
This is the dream that the people at NASA grew up with, the dream that has driven them and their supporters to keep plugging away at the conquest of space, in spite of mounting and persuasive evidence indicating that this quite possibly doesn’t really represent the very best use of their time and resources. This is the dream that will soon push our aging shuttle fleet back into orbit, fitted up with thousands of modifications and quick fixes, and this is the dream that will lead NASA to finance the construction of new alternatives to the shuttle, all bringing with them their own huge sets of impossible new technological challenges.
You’ve got to admire the astounding power of a form of literature that can keep inspiring people to do silly things.
But you’ve also got to wonder, especially on the days when those things go horribly wrong, whether this is necessarily an admirable quality.
Algo de razón tiene al afirmar que la ciencia ficción (aunque más bien la filmica y la televisiva, muy por delante de la escrita) ha modelado nuestra percepción de cómo debe ser el futuro humano en el espacio. Ciertamente, ¿a quién no le gustaría ser el capitán Kirk? ¿O uno de los comerciantes de Asimov?
Este ensayo se ha publicado en Locus y ha recibido las respuestas que cabía esperar. Por otra parte, el editor lo defiende argumentando que una literatura como la ciencia ficción debería cuestionarse todas las suposiciones.