SF and the 20th Century, Part 1: Favorite Stories

Soviet Union under Stalin. Significant in its own time as a warning against the perceived dangers of communist expansionism, it is also timeless in that it serves as a warning against modern threats—such as the loss of privacy in the age of technology—and their consequences. Engrossing and at times shocking, it brings to life of a regime whose actions would be hard to believe had they not actually existed in our own world.

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All Good Things... (Screenplay—Star Trek: The Next Generation; 1994; Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore)

The final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the crowning achievement for the series that resurrected science fiction on television. Crafted from the classic time-travel mold, "All Good Things..." adds a paradoxical twist by throwing in a spatial anomaly that stretches the current real-world theories of matter and anti-matter and applies them to time—creating an eruption of anti-time whose very existence erases our own. Its message sums up all of Star Trek, and in fact science fiction as a genre, in just two sentences. When Picard discovers that the story's turning point was when he realized the paradox—that the anomaly began in the future rather than in the past—and thus opened his mind to possibilities he had never considered, John de Lancie's "Q" responds with an intriguing revelation saying, "...that is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence." (Read the full episode guide.)

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The War of the Worlds (Novel; 1898; H.G. Wells)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this short novel by H.G. Wells would have a profound impact on the twentieth century psyche. But this ominous story about a war between the people of Earth and creatures from Mars has ingrained itself deep into our popular culture. The 1938 radio adaptation by Orson Welles, dramatized by the Mercury Theatre troupe and broadcast as a series of special news bulletins, caused nationwide mass hysteria in the United States as people thought that an actual invasion was underway. The War of the

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