This time, the idea is not buoyed on a tide of optimism and hope, but tinged with desperation, sadness and sometimes even anger. I think it is precisely this fear of the future, this sense of a looming apocalypse, this feeling that we have unleashed a monster that is now beyond our control, that has given rise to the latest outburst about the colonization of other worlds. We have opened the box and seen where our ambition leads, and though we might quickly close it again and look away, it is too late in the day for any kind of innocence. With the climate changing, with the sixth mass extinction well underway, with the ocean swimming in our industrial refuse, with our own chemical backwash in our breast milk and bloodstreams, itвЂ™s a harder world for techno-optimists to find a voice. Meanwhile, that vision of science-fueled progress has done as much damage as it has offered improvement. From biotechnology to geoengineering, from unmanned drones to internet surveillance, the democratic promise of technology has been transmuted into an authoritarian threat. The popular faith in science and technology has drained away, to be replaced by a widespread, if often unspoken, fear. I consumed Isaac Asimov novels at a rate of knots. This was the future, and it looked great.

I remember believing it myself at school in the late 1970s and the early 80s. It is a means of salvation.Д«ack in the optimistic 1950s, with the promise of material abundance everywhere, the space race beginning, and much of the population of the Western world still excited about the possibilities offered by new technologies and a beneficial, authoritative science, the idea of humans some day extending their reach to other worlds seemed simply an inevitable progression. The practicalities are not the point: it is a fantasy, a motif. No matter that it doesnвЂ™t look likely that it could happen within the lifetime of anyone alive today, if ever.

No matter that it is no more practical now than it was in the 1950s. It seems eccentric even to write the words, but thereвЂ™s no doubt that a belief in humanityвЂ™s need-perhaps its destiny-to colonize the moon, or Mars, or other worlds known or unknown, is making a strange kind of cultural comeback. IвЂ™m talking about the human colonization of other worlds. This time around, it seems more like a threat.

This time around, though, it has a different taste to it. But IвЂ™ve noticed that in the last few years that old promise has resurfaced in the popular consciousness. It didnвЂ™t take long for this optimism to abate, and for a few decades the idea seemed to disappear from the popular consciousness. It was assumed fairly widely that by the year 2000 the promise would have been kept, and that humanity would benefit greatly. But many adults were equally sold on the promise offered. It was particularly popular with children, who read about it in comics with titles like Fantastic Adventures and Planet Stories. It was perhaps most popular in the 1950s, as a new consumer society began confidently rolling off the production line, and the age of literary science fiction arguably reached its peak.

Over colonization endless space 2