Where Have All the Starships Gone?

I might be mistaken, but I've noticed a trend in science fiction recently. There's not that many spaceships. I think science fiction has trended away from spaceships, even though a starship is basically the iconic image of science fiction. They aren't conspicuously absent, but there does seem to be conspicuously less. It shouldn't be the alpha and the omega of the, of course, but the spaceship is scifi most beloved icons.  The apocalypse is big now, of course, so that has something to do with it, but I think there's more to it than that.

It might also be the growing realization of just how impractical space travel is, that humanity won't be going to other star systems or colonizing worlds anytime soon. The best we can do is watch billionaires go into space, and cheer on Curisosity and Mohawk Guy (does anyone else follow the Mars Rover on Twitter? Pew pew! Hilarious).

I blame Star Trek. It's not it's fault, of course. The original series only lasted a few seasons, but it spawned four other shows, tons of movies, books, video games, and who knows what else. It was successful as hell. If anything, it should have spawned more spaceships, as people flocked to imitate it.

But that's passed by now. Now, Star Trek is a bloated, decayed corpse of an elephant in the middle of the room, that everyone else has to step around to avoid. Any kind of high technology starship story is going to invite, fairly or not, comparisons to Star Trek.

Deal with it. Obviously differentiation is required, but that seems easy to do in a hundred different ways. Science fiction needs to get over Star Trek, and reclaim the stars for all of the other fun science fiction stories that should be told.

And while we're talking about getting over things, Firefly is not coming back. Yes, it was great. Yes, it's criminal that it got half a season when Dollhouse somehow got two. Yes, Syfy should scrap every other show and awful monster movie they're working on to bring it back on the air. But it's not happening, so let's hear about some other cool scifi show on television...there has to be one, right?

Next time: I finished Legion (it was really, really short), and my thoughts on Sanderson's novella.