The Influence of Sci-Fi on an Impressionable Teenager

I was a voracious reader as a young teenager. I had read pretty much through everything that looked interesting to me in the children's section of the Henley Library and so I went up to the librarian to ask if I could take out books from the adult section - this was, apparently, within her discretion. She asked me why I wanted 'adult' books, I said that I had finished the children's section and wanted to read more. This she knew to be true; I had been taking out 6 -10 books every week for some years. She said, "Like what?" - slightly flummoxed I blurted out, "James Bond!"

This took her by surprise. With a badly hidden wry smile, she said. "Do your parents know about this?" In for a penny, I said, "Oh yes, they have given me express permission to read Ian Fleming." She must have recognised this for the extemporaneous untruth that it manifestly was, but said "OK."

I felt as if I became an adult as I walked to the main section of the library. Naturally I picked up Casino Royale - always start at the beginning of a series. I then walked past the science fiction section and, gripped by the illustrations on the books - grabbed Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and a book of Arthur C Clarke short stories. I did like the James Bond, but I fell in love with sci-fi. It succoured me, and I devoured it.

By chance I had picked up seminal works in the genre: Foundation was the first in a marvellous trilogy (and was succeeded by Foundation & Empire and Second Foundation), and the eponymous main short story in The Sentinel was the ultimate source of Stanley Kubrik's equally seminal movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Over the next few years I finished all the books in the library's Sci-Fi section, and had moved on to 'real' literature, much to the transparent delight of the librarian. But my background in space stories meant that my juvenile mind was more than fertile ground for the fist ground-breaking (nay, seminal) Sci-Fi TV series of my generation: Star Trek!

I loved it. I think it was Tuesday or Thursday nights in the late 60s / early 70s that had Tomorrow's World, The Andy Williams Show and Star Trek - that was my night in. I didn't mind the portentous, nay pretentious scripts, the wobbly hand glued scenery and gadgets and William Shatner's general set-chewing and pitifully narcissistic over-acting.

But they often had a point too; they were not overly didactic or hectoring, but they were by no means subtle - anything but, and it is here that we get to the point of this Blog; racism.

"What?" You say; how the hell did he get there from here.

Harken, patient reader, and I shall tell you.

We never got a blatant liberal / left-wing education from my father. We were never lectured about civil equality or socialism from the dinner table; nevertheless, we imbibed it subtly at a fundamental level - and it left its mark.

There were things that we knew were just just plain wrong: including massive wealth inequality, so it’s good that we've fixed that in the last 45 years (a subject that I am sure I will be back to at some point), and racism.

I always knew that racism was wrong, but such was so obvious to me that I did not know how best to get the point across to others. What brought that home to me, in the most stark way possible, was Star Trek. There are many famous and legendary episodes of that original series (only series as far as I'm concerned) of Star Trek - such as the classics I, Mudd and The Trouble With Tribbles - but I was reminded of another key episode just the other night while surfing You Tube videos. It started with Kevin Pollak's impression of Shatner as Kirk, and after a few jumps ended up with a very interesting interview of the late, great Leonard Nimoy. The interview wandered around for while interestingly enough but then came to the topic of the episode called Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

In an episode called Plato's Stepchildren, aired four weeks prior, Gene Roddenberry (a liberally-minded Sci-Fi genius if ever there was one) had, apparently, astounded the United States with the first TV broadcast inter-racial kiss - between Uhuru and Kirk. However, the historical nature of this had gone straight over my head, as an inter-racial kiss was (in my ignorance) not of note at 15. I simply took it for granted, which I should not have done. However, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, brought the whole subject into stark relief.

For me, it was ingrained - and has been ever since - in my adolescent brain. To be fair, I had long forgotten the title of that episode - which is random and unhelpful - but I have never forgotten seeing it for the first time. The premise is simple, if not simplistic, there is a planet of humanoids with a variegated population: half of the inhabitants are black on the right, and white on the left - whereas the other half, obviously inferior (to the other clan), is black on the right hand side, and white on the left.

You first see them fighting, in front of Kirk, while they both try and argue their manifest racial superiority - and you don't quite get it - partly because they show the same skin tone to the camera.

The you see them face on, making their stupid arguments about racial superiority, and it blows your kind with its brilliance and simplicity.

I was so excited. My immature self sprang to he conclusion that this was it! This was the final nail in the coffin of racism. How could any rational person see this and not immediately be cured of the disease of racial inequality. How could they not! It made racism a thing at once manifestly puerile, illogical and iniquitous. The world would surely change forever.

Except, obviously it didn't. It changed nothing. I can't begin to describe how disappointed I was in this. I had expected to see front page news in the papers that the KKK had announced it was hanging up its hoods, and that apartheid in South Africa would simply crumble overnight - because racism had been unmasked as simply stupid!

I have never quite got over it.

#racism