Devise THIS.

One of storytelling's great advantages is that anything is possible. (Well, within the bounds of the elements and realm of the tale.)

There have been many great, albeit fictional, achievements in stories. And sometimes, yes, sometimes, they inspire us to make them part of our own reality.

For example, Jules Verne thought way ahead of his time and presented the world with the very idea of a submarine. Thanks to the grand vision of the Nautilus, we now have deep-diving water craft. Lasers. Granted, they do not yet spout from actual guns nor have the power to explode or damage something on contact. But still, we have Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER). Okay, yes, the technology for them predated the most famous lasers of all in the Star Wars saga. But even before George Lucas made them a household word, writers such as H.G. Wells, Mikhail Bulgakov and Alexey Tolstoy came up with surprising similar concepts in The War of the Worlds (1898), Fatal Eggs (1925) and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1927) respectively.

In my opinion, there are two technological devices from the movies that we should be focusing on bringing into reality. I'm convinced that with these two items we really would be able to save the planet. Or at least bring much of the poisoning and destruction to a halt. I'm not saying it will be easy to actually create them...or even that existing technology is sufficient enough that we are close. But I don't think that should prevent us from finding a way. I hope you will agree that we need these two things:


Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor
Back to the Future

In part two of this Sci-Fi masterpiece (which has but one flaw that I can see) Doc Brown scrambles to fill this tank with trash. Old beer cans (even with swishes of beer still inside), wrappers, banana peels...like it matters. Garbage. Mr. Fusion will convert trash to pure, clean energy. Think on that. Imagine a world where Garbage Disposals are a thing of the past. With Mr. Fusion in your home, your trash becomes power. Pretty cool. And besides being an all too easy renewable source of power, we'd be elminating garbage altogether. No more landfills, poisoning of the seas, city dumps or sewage. Hell, even your toliet could be pumped into good ol' Mr. Fusion.

Repulsor Lift

Star Wars Saga

We all love it - the way some objects in the galaxy far, far away defy gravity and float along with very little effort. It's just cool. But forget about the fun factor for a moment. It's practical! Think of the space-saving in your home. No need for a table to hold up that sculpture. Just equip it with Repulsor Lift and store something underneath it as well. Okay, so that's not exactly world-changing.

But that's just scratching the surface. We could stop paving over lush expanses of Nature. No more cutting into the dirt, making tracks, skid marks or anything of the sort - not if you simply float along! (And yes, I am aware that "anti-gravity" devices appear in Back to the Future II. But A New Hope introduced it to me first, so I give Star Wars the credit.)

How about a Repulsor Lift speeder bike with a Mr. Fusion built onto it? It definitely sounds worthwhile! Saving the environment through fiction should be a reality.

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
-Willy Wonka
(who is really quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy)