Music:
Ressickan Flute and Piano Duet of the "Inner Light" Suite from the
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Lessons".
Copyright © Paramount Pictures. No infringement of Paramount's copyright is intended.
My favourite science fiction author is Clifford D Simak. I first read Time and
Again at the tender and impressionable age of 11, and it changed my outlook on life.
The story centres on an individual caught up in a war fought across time, with
opposing sides trying to outdo each other by attempting to change the outcome of
historical events to alter the timeline in their favour. The war was between
"natural" born individuals and androids, biological but artificially produced.
The latter were fighting for recognition as true individuals with souls and rights, denied
them by naturals.
The concept of the story was that all sentient beings have a destiny (a real
"guardian angel" dwelling on a distant planet!) and therefore are all equal.
Heady stuff for a young lad.
There are parallels with this story and Star Trek: TNG. In the episode "The
Measure of a Man ", Captain Picard defends Data in court, as a sentient being in
charge of his own destiny, against an engineer who wants to dismantle him, arguing that
Data as a machine has no rights and is owned by Starfleet. Picard passionately argues that
the outcome of the trial will affect not only Data, but those who come after him,
threatening to create an under-race of disenfranchised, rightless beings. This,
apparently, was what had happened to the biological androids in Time and Again.
My favourite Star Trek: TNG episode is The Inner Light in which Picard is
targeted by a probe. Although under its influence for only 25 minutes or so, to Picard a
full 35 years elapses, living amongst the people who launched the probe and filled it with
their history and culture. In Time and Again, our hero is stranded back in 20th
century Wisconsin for 11 years, although he is only absent from his own time for a couple
of days.
If you are interested in "destiny" type science fiction and have not
discovered Simak, I suggest you seek out City, a collection of short stories,
linked and arranged chronologically, which take you from the near to the distant future.
They are eight legends told by the Dogs (yes, really) to each other, and although they do
not themselves understand much of what they speak it will be all too clear to you.
This book is back in print, and available from Amazon.co.uk.
Click the icon for more
information or to order:
"City", Clifford D
Simak More Simak!
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Updated: 02/02/06
