NPR does a most excellent series called "This I Believe", apparently a revival of a radio show from the 1950's wherein people -- all kinds of people -- write and send in essays stating their own deeply held beliefs and the things on which they base their lives. It's a wonderfully inspiring and often moving series, and I think shows the goodness of normal everyday people. It shows there is hope for the human species after all.

For quite some time I've thought to submit an essay of my own, mulled over what I would say. Or rather how I would put into words this mish-mash of science, science-fiction, and the future of humankind. I finally got an idea I could base it on a couple days ago, and so here it is. I've already submitted it to NPR, but you can read it here.

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This I Believe ~ The Future
written for the "This I Believe" NPR series
by Carol E. Meacham


Twice a year I make a pilgrimage to go look at a rock.

As a science-fiction writer that rock is the literal embodiment of all that I believe in, the hopes and dreams of a future where humankind escapes the ancient chains of gravity and ignorance and fear that hold us trapped on this one tiny blue mote. That rather ordinary lump of dark gray rock came to Earth as part of the treasure trove returned by the Apollo astronauts from the Moon.

More than the simple fact of its existence here on Earth, the Moon rock represents to me so much of the greatness of which humankind is capable. Eight years before my own birth President Kennedy dared the Russians to a race to the Moon, and the nation responded with thousands of builder's hands and designer's minds and the skill of the finest pilots ever to fly. On the day I was born Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and their ships Columbia and Eagle blasted off as the first scouts of the greatest adventure ever known, an adventure written of and speculated about by science-fiction writers since H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Four days after I was born, Armstrong dropped from the Lunar Module's ladder to the Moon's surface and with that first step the forces that would guide my life -- science and science-fiction -- fused into one. At that moment humankind became a species that had touched a world beyond its own.

To me, the most beautiful words ever written by any human anywhere would be those inscribed on the plaque attached to the Lunar Module's lower half, a plaque that is still on the Moon today and will be there for uncounted millenia to come: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind." The Space Race began as a competition, but in the end it was simply two human beings who took those first steps on another world.

Twice a year I make the three hour drive to go look at that rock. Of all the displays the Moon rock is the most unpretentious. There are no kids staring in awe at it the way I do, and if the adults notice at all they barely give it a look. Simply a double-walled plexiglass box containing what to the uninformed looks like a piece of lumpy concrete. But to me, it is a stone to conjure with -- the great shining promise of a future worth living for.