Epoch, Chapter 1:

I.

“The future is now, Madge. I’m soaking in it."

To talk about science fiction, when we live in a truly Orwellian world, where politics and greed have teamed up to bring us endless war, and the media falls all over itself to feed us the lies, is to talk about the fast evolution of thought, technology, society, and the human animal.

You could almost just call it news, but from a unique, somewhat sociological perspective.

The world now eerily resembles the futures envisioned by Frank Miller [who clearly wrote the 2016 election,] George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. And with the exception of Clarke, (who’s story we will return to,) all of them wrote exclusively about the dire realities of a technologically “advanced” world like the one we now inhabit, focusing keen eyes on the political and human repercussions.

So, after all that, if you still ask, “why look at our current world through the lens of science fiction and its creators?”

My answer is that the prognostication and social commentary of hard science fiction has never been more relevant, or more a reflection of the now.

I then might ask you, “when was the last time you heard someone say ‘the world is really futuristic looking…’?” But I won’t, because I already know the answer. It was recently. And paradoxically, weren’t we all just complaining about NOT getting the future we were promised?

We are now getting it, and then some. All that Blade Runner and a bag of chips— possibly quite a lot more than we bargained for, or can handle.

There’s a real conversation to be had, therefore, about our direction as a species, utopia v dystopia (being a matter of perspective,) and how we embrace and assimilate our brave new world along the way. Epoch is that conversation.

Speculative Fiction, science fiction, sci-fi, and sci-fantasy, etc., are all about big ideas. We can parse the labels of “hard” science fiction vs. sci-fi all day, but when you get down to it, its more about about a grand sense of wonder, escape, imagination, dreaming of better and exotic worlds, rich themes of transposition, self-reflection, humanity and life, etc.

Epoch exists to engage those ideas. There will be film reviews and articles, but my focus is not to say that a film, show, book, or comic is good or bad, but rather to discuss the ideas inherent to them. This is why I will also be including commentary on the burgeoning space industry and the technological boom we are currently enjoying.

It has become more and more of a pleasure to be among those dreamers, as we watch the world transmute into something new, but somehow familiar, right before our eyes.

It is pure science fiction now.

Next up: Where the imaginary rubber meets the real road, the genre and pop-culture comparisons begin!