Then came the space race, the US versus the USSR. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in outer space, when he orbited the Earth in the Soviet Vostok spacecraft in 1961.
Within a decade the USA had successfully landed men on the moon and returned them.
Space exploration began. Unmanned space craft have been probing and examining the solar system’s planets and moons to far off Pluto. A comet has been chased down and had a monitoring device attached.
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games opening ceremony featured “rocket man” defying gravity, bringing to life comic strip hero Buck Rogers.
Eighty years on from my introduction to space fiction, science and technology has brought reality to much of it.
Billionaire Elon Musk is about to cash in on space advances. He and his team plan a 21st century trip to Mars, with a plan to colonise that desolate sphere.
Luckily he won’t have to face Tiger Men with flash guns like Buck Rogers did, or Flash Gordon’s arch enemy Ming the Merciless.
Nevertheless, I’ll draw a parallel.
The 1930 story theme was that evil alien Ming was out to destroy Earth’s atmosphere with his Radon Ray machine, and it was Flash Gordon who foiled his attempt.
That may be fantasy, but the realty exists that the extra carbon we spew out is truly a threat to our existence.
Two years ago in the USA, Republican Donald Trump won the White House, despite his open extreme anti-environment climate change denial agenda.
Since then nationalist, far-right political parties have made significant electoral gains all across Europe and other continents. None of them rate environmental issues as priorities.
Last weekend in South America, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election. Called Brazil’s Trump by many, he too is extremely anti-environment and has said global warming is nothing more than “greenhouse fables”.
I can’t help thinking of Flash Gordon’s arch enemy Ming the Merciless, with his Radon Ray’s bombarding Earth’s atmosphere.
The way things are going, we won’t need him. We already have enough mad leaders to achieve the same effect with greenhouse gas emissions.
Imagine Buck Rogers waking up in 2419 AD to find an uninhabited planet. The Armageddon he was meant to save the world from had already happened.
All this because the people of the 21st century refused to make the changes they knew were necessary to save ourselves.
Hopefully there will be an awakening from our hypnotic Rip Van Winkle trance in time to prevent this fictional outcome becoming the reality.
Collectively it is up to us.
