StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Podcast

James Lileks remembers Skylab on the anniversary of its fall to earth.  He takes this opportunity to ask an important question:  has science fiction made us jaded?

Some took a strange perverse delight in the supposed failure of Skylab. It reinforced something we’d come to believe – we went to the moon a few years ago, and now we can’t even keep a space station in orbit. Skylab was the butt of jokes when it was operational as well; they didn’t do anything fun up there. They just floated around and took notes. Big deal. My theory: science fiction in movies had gotten so good that people became bored with the real version. Why pay attention to an ungainly can rolling around the earth, when you can watch Luke swoop into the trench to blow up the Death Star for the 294th time?

This perspective persists. Now and then I watch “2001” and wish we had a big space station hanging over the Earth, and then I remember: oh, right, we do.

This is the "dude, where's my FTL?" perspective.

-The Fredösphere