Like the rest of Team MoonJoy, the past ten or so days have been about the fear and joy (and anxiety!) that came with the Artemis II mission. As a Gen-X individual we will always (those of us who paid attention) have generational trauma because of Challenger. And yes, as a teenager in the science stream (Malaysian high school system in the 1990s had streams for both the Arts and the Sciences), I harboured fantasies of “going up there” along with every other space nerd. Obviously, it never happened and I found that I was more inclined towards writing science fiction than towards spending hours in labs. Ergo, becoming a literary scholar who is also a space nerd.
That dream lay in embers in me, as with so many others. That aspirational dream of life beyond the stars but more importantly, that we can rise above all the things that grind us down to imagine a better collective future.
The success of the Artemis II mission gave us something we needed in these dark times: a sense of hope and fellowship. It spoke to all of us who dream of a future that could be (or could have been) so much better than it is right now. And so I found myself with tears in my eyes when Christina Koch reminded us that all of us on this beautiful planet we call home are a crew, paddling together on a lifeboat.
And this made me think about the best of what science fiction can do. It brings home to me why we space nerds love scifi so much. It reminds us of our humanity. It reminds us of the potential of what we can do as a species when we’re not waging idiotic wars in the name of supremacy, prejudice and profit.
Hope is not just a four letter word. And humanity, it matters. In all of its infinite diversity*.
Till the Next Blog Post,
sic itur ad astra
xx
Anita
*this is how you know I am forever a trekkie