The Optimism We Lost—and Found Again in Classic Sci-Fi
Have you ever noticed how turning on a sci-fi movie today feels a bit like attending a seminar on how humanity is about to meet a grim, miserable end? Seriously. Open up any major streaming platform, pick a sci-fi title at random, and you are almost guaranteed a vibrant cocktail of corporate dystopia, authoritarian surveillance, rogue artificial intelligence, and a crumbling climate where everyone wears grey rags and eats nutrient paste. It makes you want to crawl under a blanket, check your smoke detector, and whisper an apology to your toaster. We live in an age of incredible technological power, yet our pop culture is utterly obsessed with catastrophic failure. But it wasn't always this way. If you wind...