barryr666/science fiction

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its 5 year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations; TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Closing lines of this second and concluding episode are "The machine is what we want it to be; the mirror of our dreams." However, what has gone before would suggest that the machine is far from perfect and has all man's imperfections and more. The future of Artificial Intelligence; super computers with human emotion equivalents or machines no longer made from plastic, metal and wires but cloned with all the imperfections and faults genetically modified. If we can feed electric stimuli directly into our brain and neural circuits, then what we have is virtual reality indistinguishable from reality in our consciousness; something maybe akin to the Matrix.

The creation of the machine to free man from his labours was the vision. The reality is far from this ideal. Robot literally translates to mechanical slave and that was the application, on the assembly lane. Man has always been afraid of intelligent machines whilst at the same time wanting to push the boundaries ever further and closer to replicating man. In science fiction, it is always the brain that is the weakest component and instead of serving mankind, wants to take over from him. So what is the future? Artificial Intelligences with intellects far beyond those of man or turning man into a cyborg with artificial implants?

Alternate ending providing hope.

Black hole; must look into it.

Fantastic and striking image.

Winners and nominees of the Locus science fiction awards since its inception 38 years ago. Also provided are links to winners and nominees of other science fiction awards such as the Hugo, John Campbell, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke.

Excellent and diverse list of Utopias where all is not as it first appears. Prison can take on many forms and perhaps the Garden of Eden was one such too.