I am a realist, a technologist and a bit of an idealist when it comes to science-fiction. But I leave fantasy out of it, although fantasy may be big among readers of bestsellers and theatergoers of blockbusters from novels about things that will never happen that are exciting because they are so seemingly dangerous and weird. The universe is a very dangerous place and much weirder than we can currently understand. Why fantasy works so well in science fiction. Because, we really don't know what is really out there except what the best science can tell us at this point in time. Black holes at the center of galaxies seem to be obvious but have only been proven recently… although theorized for over 100 years.

       However, in the 21st century in this case, the city of Los Angeles, potentially faces three great dangers… Another pandemic like 2020, climate change caused by global warming and geological activity along the Pacific Rim. I left out world war or an economic or other disaster, although they may happen as well–something unknown.                Fortunately, a simple experiment by NASA recently has shown that the threat from meteorites and comets that have caused past extinctions like the one 65 million years ago can be easily thwarted. A rogue planet or planetoid coming from outside the solar system at a high rate of speed may be a different matter, but highly unlikely.

       Predicting the future is dangerous because we can't foresee everything that is coming even though science fiction has done a good job for some of it. Some of what has happened has been missed by even the best scientists and futurists. Like the current rapid advance of artificial intelligence, AI, into everything that we do creating concerns about what it will do to or for, humans.

       No one predicted the World Wars I and II in the 20th century, a worldwide Great Depression, the development of the atomic bomb and atomic energy. Landing and bringing back 8 humans from the moon and the power of the Internet. Even the World Wide Web of the Internet effectively bringing about a rather troubling global village as predicted by Marshall McLuhan that has so many peaceful uses and dark ones as well.

       I chose Drake Hutchins to be my alter ego. Having worked with black partners in higher education over the years, chose Derek Jones as a partner for Drake like my twin brother was a partner when we were 18. I was already a very good drafter (in those days, draftsman) who could design and build almost anything I wanted. Roger and I, by that time, had worked a number of jobs from picking beans at 9 years old in the fields to factory work at 17 where we built mobile homes and were asked by the superintendent to stay on in the fall rather than go on to college. We were hard-working innovators and pacesetters, something that people higher up valued and saw in us.

       I wanted to be an architect and an astronaut. Both of them seemed to be within my reach at 18. So, I made the presumption that in the 21st century there would be young people like my brother and me, willing to take on the world with everything we had, regardless of what happened or was to come. Rising up from sickness with 90% of everyone around us we knew, dead, simply did the best we could with the knowledge that we had.

       Unfortunately, while I have visited Los Angeles briefly a few times, it has been a long time since I've been there. So, I may have, in spite of my research, got some things about the city wrong. But this is fiction, and this is a future we cannot predict. Especially when we get to the 22nd century where all bets are off when it comes to what will happen then. Assuming we haven't destroyed the world with our ignorance and fascination with having children and wealth over everything else.  

Ronald W. Hull

June 3, 2024