Growing up I read Asimov and Clarke, Verne and Herbert, Heinlein and Bradbury, and of course, H. G. Wells. I was eager to see the future they painted with their words; and it has come to pass.
Whether they really saw the future, or whether the engineers and designers have subconsciously created the visions they painted, I do not know.
As a boy I gasped in wonder at their visions, as a man, I am simply left to wonder.
Recently, I stopped in at a local grocery store one morning on my way out to spend the day hunting. I was dressed in camouflage; pants and shirt, and jacket.
The 30-something clerk at the register excitedly said to me: “Wow, cool, I have one of the hats, but didn’t know they made a jacket. How many points did you have to get for that?”
At first I had no idea what he was asking. Then as we spoke a bit more, I realized that he had noticed the “Cabela’s” label on my jacket. And the conversation led me to believe that he thought the jacket was a prize that could be earned by scoring enough points on a video game that Cabela’s markets titled “Big Game Hunter”.
While I didn’t laugh out loud at him, I left pretty amused.
Several hours later, I sat down to rest with my back up against the broad sun-warmed trunk of a California Live Oak some 4 miles from the end of the road. In front of and below me stretched a large field of mostly mixed rye and native grasses in the Ventana Wilderness of Central California. Spaced about the field were several other oak, madrone, and pine trees. Skirting the edge of the field and rising above my position was an incline covered mostly in manzanita brush, with some buck brush and cactus mixed in.
The sun’s rays angled low in the sky sliding ever closer to the crest of the ridge on the opposite side of the valley. Golden-toned light cast sideways through leaves and branches warmed the look as well as the feel of the air as the sun sank into a pillow of fog that hugged the far ridgeline.
I watched Blue Jays hop from tree to tree, screeching and chasing each other.
In a dead bleached-white tree a red-headed wood pecker drummed holes into the top portion of the trunk. Dead for many years, the tree’s bark had released its hold on the trunk and fallen to the ground in heaps around the still upright trunk. The larger branches had also settled to the ground and formed the base of a large wood pile.
Squirrels sat side by side on the top-most branches of the pile, munching on acorns, and keeping a close eye on the activities around them. A cotton tailed rabbit bumped along in and out of the tangle of limbs on the ground; dashing out to select a few mouthfuls of grass and back to chew them thoroughly before returning for more. A covey of quail fluttered in fits and starts across the meadow, from tree shade to tree shade, scratching and poking around for food as they moved.
Winging overhead a golden eagle interrupted the circling flight of a red-tailed hawk, but not the ceaseless circling of the turkey buzzards who were riding the thermals along the ridgeline. The hawk called its displeasure before sliding off to another valley out of line with the eagle’s travels.
Leaning there, warmed by the sun, watching the activity below me, I munched on some jerky, and chewed Pistachio nuts, drinking from my water now and then. And my mind drew back to the clerk at the store and his video game; and his desire to “earn” a jacket by scoring enough points shooting video game animals while sitting in his darkened room staring at a colored screen. And to the visions of the science fiction giants that I read as a kid; and their awe inspiring “future” that has come to pass.
Nuclear submarines and travel to other worlds; cell phones and computers that you carry in your hands; and “virtual” pleasures and thrills that insulate mankind from the real world around us.
I see the near future of Total Recall where instead of going on vacation, vacation memories are planted in your brain; and of Surrogates where people really have no interaction, instead living their lives through the actions of their “duplicate robot beings”; and I grieve for mankind.
Mankind willingly sets aside the real, for watered–down imitations. And as a result, most men and women live less than the animals in the fields below me.
I believe that Asimov and Clarke, Verne and Herbert, Heinlein and Bradbury, and of course, H. G. Wells would all cry over that truth that has come to pass from their visions of greatness.
Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved
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