I never considered myself to be a fan of science fiction. But the more I thought about writing this piece, the more I realized that that isn’t exactly true. Ever since I remember one of my eyes was firmly on the future. Watching those first episodes of Star Trek on the hand-me down black and white television with my brother and sister in Germany had a very different effect and importance than watching, say, Heidi or Flipper. There was something in those movies that I was looking to for clues about what was possible, about who we are, and about where we were going as human beings.

And it wasn’t just me. We, humans, as I came to understand, seem to be creatures of the future. As much as we are shaped by the past we are always planning, hoping for, looking forward to, dreading or dreaming the future.

As a teenager, I read 1984, of course, and profoundly internalized its terrible vision. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and Soylent Green, another classic I could never ever forget. Inspite of the extraordinary creativity, resources, and depth of probing and thinking that went into the creation of these stories, what remained was a disheartening sense that the future we were thinking of in most cases seemed to be an unbroken continuation of the worst or most primitive of human tendencies. Greed, cruelty, selfishness, and domination were extrapolated, magnified, and given weight by the very fact that they were being acted out in the future—sometimes by humans, sometimes by aliens or even robots. In many ways, the best we could hope for seemed to be the survival of simple human values like romantic love, family bonds, or friendship in a vast context of threat. The future did not look like something to look forward to.

And yet, human evolution has been about the victory of cognition, rationality and consciousness over the limitations of earthly matter and unconsciousness. Of higher aspirations and an increasingly subtle and more inclusive morality. Like Bill Moyers said, “Civilization did not just happen.” Whether it is the mastery of fire, of language, electricity, motherhood, genetics, or space travel, we are working our way beyond the limitations of the physical world, both inside of us and outside, at ever faster speed, in ever more far reaching and deeper ways.

Sci-fi stories are one way of reaching into what might be our destiny. Deep inside the DNA of both our collective unconscious and our consciousness seems to be anchored a certain directionality. With more of us no longer busy with just trying to survive, we are freer than ever to actually think about where it is we want to go.

The best sci-fi stories are those that not only explore new and outrageous technical possibilities, but also dare to imagine new ways of being, new dimensions of being human. These are much more rare. One of the most powerful examples of trying to venture into new territory I have come across is Ender Wiggins, in Ender’s Game. Another is the book Herland. There is lots of room for many more. The integral philosopher Ken Wilber, the grapevine says, is working on a sci-fi book. According to Wired magazine, the “serious” literary community, which has often ignored or scoffed at its futuristic grandchild, is now discovering the power of the genre.

Thinking about the future is thinking about who we will be and there might be no better way to do it than throwing off the limitations of the world as we know it and let our imagination and deepest aspirations run wild. In all directions ... just as Da Vinci did when he sketched that first Flying Machine.

(image by tohoscope via flickr.)