Fantasy and Science Fiction - A Scientist's Notebook: "But to wait for the right time might mean waiting forever, risking a decline from which humanity might never recover. History has a consistent record of the good happpening alongside the bad; to hesitate might be disastrous, hurling us into the irreversible decline of Arnold Toynbee's two dozen failed civilizations, with no new ground upon which to begin again. Such was the argument against the 'prioritizers.'
Asimov wrote to the skeptics:
'I have received a number of letters concerning my article 'Colonizing the Heavens.'
Some call it fiction. (Real nonsense, I suppose, like reaching the Moon.)
Some say I am trying to subvert the doctrine of Zero Population Growth. (As though it weren't possible to try to colonize space and stop the population growth, too. They are not mutually exclusive.)
Some say it is too expensive. (Not if the world stops supporting military machines.)
Some say that nobody wants an engineered environment. (Nobody? How many people are living in caves these days?)
Some say that nobody would ever want to cross space in three days to live in a space colony. (This from people whose ancestors two or three generations back probably crossed the Atlantic in steerage, or crossed the western desert in covered wagons.)
Some say that Third World people would never go. (Sure. Only aristocrats fled to the New World. All the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free never came, did they?)
Some say let's solve our problems on Earth before we try to colonize space. (Someone said that to the Pilgrims. Come on, they said, let's solve our problems right here in Europe.)'
Classic stuff. For Asimov, colonies were not primarily technological feats. He echoed the prevailing historical sense of this age: that frontiers have shaped our world by unleashing new ideas with the European explosion outward. These ideas might have died except for the unrestricted ground of the frontier, where the old cultures could not kill them with preemptive criticism and outright suppression."
Asimov wrote to the skeptics:
'I have received a number of letters concerning my article 'Colonizing the Heavens.'
Some call it fiction. (Real nonsense, I suppose, like reaching the Moon.)
Some say I am trying to subvert the doctrine of Zero Population Growth. (As though it weren't possible to try to colonize space and stop the population growth, too. They are not mutually exclusive.)
Some say it is too expensive. (Not if the world stops supporting military machines.)
Some say that nobody wants an engineered environment. (Nobody? How many people are living in caves these days?)
Some say that nobody would ever want to cross space in three days to live in a space colony. (This from people whose ancestors two or three generations back probably crossed the Atlantic in steerage, or crossed the western desert in covered wagons.)
Some say that Third World people would never go. (Sure. Only aristocrats fled to the New World. All the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free never came, did they?)
Some say let's solve our problems on Earth before we try to colonize space. (Someone said that to the Pilgrims. Come on, they said, let's solve our problems right here in Europe.)'
Classic stuff. For Asimov, colonies were not primarily technological feats. He echoed the prevailing historical sense of this age: that frontiers have shaped our world by unleashing new ideas with the European explosion outward. These ideas might have died except for the unrestricted ground of the frontier, where the old cultures could not kill them with preemptive criticism and outright suppression."
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