The Future

by Christopher Brookmyre

When I was a child, I believed that the future was about science, and that science was the future. My favourite places were airports, where the gleaming machines and the aspirationally space-age décor seemed the ultimate antidote to the drab austerity of the places I liked least, which were churches. Technology, design, science, all spoke of what we hoped to become. Religion was about a very ancient past. Hardly surprising that a child would be more excited by the one he feels he has an investment in and a potential first-hand involvement with.

I knew I would be 32 in the year 2000, which seemed aeons away, the most futuristic date imaginable: further on than most fictional visions. Orwell chose 1984; the original matinee-serial Buck Rogers woke from suspended animation to the world of 1987; while Gerry Anderson’s Moonbase Alpha was set for launch in 1999. By 2000, then, I thought we’d all be getting around in Eagle Transporters and wearing white spandex. I thought we’d be living science fiction.

In many, many ways, we are living science. However, some of us would rather be living fiction. Some of us are actually trying to obstruct science.

This is from an email circulating NASA right now: "The Big Bang is not proven fact; it is opinion. It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." The email also states that "the word 'theory' must be added after every mention of the Big Bang".

Can I just say that again: This is from an email circulating NASA! The email is from NASA's Public Relations Officer, a person who was appointed by George Bush, against NASA's will, pushing the same Christian fundamentalist agenda as is arguing for “equal time” in schools to teach Creationism — sorry, “Intelligent Design” (ID) — as is given to teaching evolution.

We’re not immune, either. We already have faith schools in the UK teaching Creationism instead of evolution. Quick list of sciences we’d have to abandon if we accept Creationism to be correct: cosmology, physics, palaeontology, archaeology, geology, zoology, botany and biogeography.

Get the fuck out of my child’s classroom. His classroom is his future.

The future is still about science. Science is still the future.