Henrietta Hay's Column

I am surrounded by science fiction fans. My son John started reading science fiction as soon as he outgrew the Hardy Boys. My close friends talk about time and space and wormholes and borgs as freely as I talk about mysterious murders and intrepid detectives. My friend the philosopher recently commented that science fiction readers have a distinctive way of looking at the world, that they are convinced that they are of superior intelligence. Maybe so, but they have not yet converted me from V. I. Warshawski chasing criminals around Chicago.

Science fiction in the movies and on TV, however, is something else again. I'm hooked. So how, oh how, could Paramount have ended Star Trek: the Next Generation after only seven seasons? It has now warped out of sensor range, leaving 20 million faithful viewers either crying in their beer or angrily trying to find out who to blame.

The lure of outer space for earthbound humans is as old as humankind. I suspect that the wonder I feel looking up at the stars on a clear Colorado night is not unlike that which the cave woman felt looking up at those same stars. Scientists and astronauts have to deal with truth and reality so far as they know it. But the rest of us can enjoy the mystery; can make up our own version of the stars. With books and movies to expand our own imaginations, we can pretend anything we want about space.

Science fiction on film has been around for a long time. In the movie, A Trip to the Moon, in 1902, a rocket ship is fired out of something resembling a huge cannon. The moon approaches and, in the best of fairy tale tradition, has a huge smiling face. The rocket crashes squarely into the right eye. One wonders whether the moon is still smiling, and whether Neil Armstrong found the remains of that rocket when he was walking around up there.

Star Trek: the Next Generation started with the vision of Gene Roddenberry and added fine writing and an excellent cast, which set apart from most space operas. I like the way it looks at the human condition. Somehow or other, humanity always gets threatened, and always gets saved. While the setting is in outer space and full of wonderful electronic gizmos, the problems are familiar to us because they are the same problems we have had since the dawn of time. The show wrestles with them in human terms and always suggests that a solution is possible. Ursula Le Guin, a science fiction author herself, says, "Violence on The Next Generation is shown as a problem, or the failure to solve a problem, never as the true solution. This is surely one reason why the show has such a following among grown women and men."

But it is the characters on the Starship Enterprise in the 24th century that have made the show such a success. The crewmembers are our personal friends. They are smart, real, decent, often funny and mostly "good" unless the bad guys have altered them temporarily.

With their advanced civilization, they tend to see people as they really are, rather than as they appear. As watchers of Star Trek we soon forget that Worf looks a little odd (well, a lot odd!) because he is so warm and decent and loyal inside. We watch Data the android as he tries to become more human and find out how to laugh and what to laugh at. We forget that his brain consists of wires and transistors until he lifts off the top and starts changing and adding circuits.

And we wonder what Geordie would look like if he could see without his visor, but it doesn't matter. As Le Guin says, "Who cares about 'normal' when what you care about is Geordie?" She goes on to say, "This is what science fiction does best. It challenges our idea of what we see as like ourselves. It increases our sense of kinship."

Science Fiction lovers have had a great ride on the Starship Enterprise. The mission has been to take us up into the stars and show us what the future can be -- awe-inspiring and frightening but always hopeful. In the words of Q the villain/hero, "It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."