ith
the new millennium less than three weeks away, there's something I think
I should let you know. And that is--
("But wait," you say. "Didn't
the new millennium begin
last Jan. 1st? Isn't that what all the hoopla was about? Isn't that
why the
world's most important edifices--from the Washington Monument to the
Eiffel Tower--were surrounded by crowds and wreathed in fireworks?
Or was I only dreaming?")
Let me assure you that you were not dreaming. But before I deliver the news that I
originally started to tell you,
let me also insist to you that what occurred back
at that stroke of midnight perched
between the evening of Dec. 31, 1999, and Jan. 1, 2000, was not the changing
of one millennium into the next. I hate to do this to you--I'm
not the sort who would let slip the news about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny,
either--but the truth is, you were being had. The world, unwilling to let logic
interfere with a good excuse for a party, popped the
champagne corks a full year early.
Since a millennium marks the span of a full thousand years,
the first millennium began at the initial
nanosecond of year one and ended at the last moment of the year 1000. As for the
second millennium, the one which we still currently occupy,
it began at the start of the year 1001, and will end only when 2000 finally sputters out.
The third millennium, the one in which
you've been tricked to believe you're already living, will not actually start until
the science-fictional year of
2001 explodes on the scene at the end of this month. As enticing as it was
to celebrate the
turning of 1999 to 2000--which provided as visceral a charge as one gets
watching an odometer hit the 100,000
mile mark--that change had nothing to do with sweeping in
a new millennium. So when most of the
rest of society is treating this Dec. 31 as just another New Year's Eve,
remember--this time it's the real start of the new millennium.
Science fiction is the mainstream
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let me get back to
my original point, which
is--we've won! Science fiction has taken over the fabric of civilization
to such a degree that it can no longer be distinguished from the mainstream.
I've long known this in my gut, for I've witnessed today's television, movies and
consumer technology
become more and more like SF with each passing moment,
but last night it struck me even more strongly.
I was watching TV at the time, and it wasn't even a program that
caused me to feel this way, but rather a commercial. In the ad, aliens
were interrogating
an off-screen abductee, demanding information on how to win a local lottery. The
big-headed, wide-eyed creatures, who could have stepped out of an episode of The X-Files,
were unable to
get an answer as to how to win the $1 million top prize. When the camera
turned from the
frustrated aliens, we saw that the reason for their deadend was that
they had been interviewing, not a human, but a cow.
My surprise at this small attempt at a joke was not great, because
that sort of cinematic
misdirection occurs all the time, and I've come to expect it. Rather, my surprise was at
the name the Maryland State Lottery had given to the contest.
It was called 2001: A Cash Odyssey, parodying with its name both the novel by
Arthur C. Clarke and the film by Stanley Kubrick.
We live in a time when the
science fiction of my youth, once marginalized, is now lived and breathed
by all those who had once discounted it.
Just one more piece of evidence as we enter the true third millennium
that science fiction has won its war for the hearts and minds of the people.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, and also edited SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel, in addition to
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit.
