I’ve been sitting on this gripe for years, but enough is enough. It’s ranting time. Today’s subject: pessimism in Science Fiction. Buckle up everyone.

Back in the good old happy days of Star Trek: The Original Series, the future seemed like a bright and hopeful place. Humans were set to find peace and unity, striving as a race to create a better life for the species and a greater world to live in. Now, thanks to basically every contemporary Science Fiction novel, movie or TV show currently popular, it seems like the future is destined to be a bleak, gloomy, desolate wasteland. What happened to thinking the best of humanity? Why is there not more popular fiction extolling the virtues of our species? Is there simply no good drama left to be had in a technologically advanced future without everyone being oppressed, controlled or enslaved?

Long gone are the days when people looked forward to flip phones and flying cars with anticipation. And in all honesty, it’s depressing. Replaced with the fear of an AI insurrection, nuclear war or hostile alien takeovers, we are now left with nothing to look forward to in the fictional future but endless dystopian societies and war. Frankly, enough is enough. While a lot of these stories are expertly told and brilliantly crafted, it’s getting to the point now where the genre is becoming predictable as a whole.

Surely, we’ve not reached the limits of our collective imagination for the future. Surely there are more interesting stories to be told in wholesome exploration and advancement than have already been exhausted. We can’t have run out of steam already! We’re barely getting started! Drama can exist in any story, in any setting and still be interesting. The whole universe doesn’t need to be imploding in order to make for an interesting story.

This post – more than just somewhere for me to air my ever growing grievances with this dark!future trope – is a cry out to the modern science fiction writers of the world. Please, PLEASE. Give us our hopeful future back. In these trying times, we may find that we need something to look forward to.