Science Fiction

Doug Ash

December 7, 2012

My first "space" experience came when I was about 10 in the form of a Ccience Fiction book - Assignments in Space with Rip Foster. I was reminded of this when I was clearing my library of old books and found the original hard cover. It would be cheesy now, but it sure fired my imagination. Soon I was trekking to the public library to get my maximum 4 books – Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, and later Niven. From Stranger in a Strange Land – can you now use GROK as a word in scrabble and not be challenged? From Glory Road – was Heinlein Amish in a former life? From Ringworld- who wouldn’t want to explore an artifact with 1,000,000 times the area of planet earth. And how about Teela Brown – bred for luck, what a concept. From Martian Chronicles – I hope I live to see Bradbury’s statement “We are the Martians.” come true. I fervently hope that the aliens who find us are more like Jean Luke Picard in Star Trek TNG and not like the Europeans who invaded the new world 500 years ago.