By Joseph Orosco (November 2, 2018)
Mark Bould shows us that if you know the science fiction of alien invasion you can pretty much analyze the reasoning behind Trump’s proposal for Space Force:
“Vice President Mike Pence’s August 9 Space Force press junket made clear that this great big bullying blustering pussy-grab for space, this effort to Make America Great Again and recover all that was lost to the perfidy of previous administrations is about just one thing: occupying the high ground. Getting out of the gravity well so as to be able to rain down shit on anyone who gets out of line. It is just a tired reboot of the old imperial fantasy of control from above. It can be traced through nineteenth-century science fiction about airborne anarchists and dirigible dictators, and through Winston Churchill’s bombing of Iraqi Kurds; it can be seen in the fruity fascist overtones of the Wings Over the World global law enforcers in Things to Come (1936), and in the Strategic Defense Initiative first advocated by sundry SF writers and then by Ronald Reagan; and it can be seen in the murderous drone program overseen by Bush, Jr., Obama, and Trump.”
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