Member-only story
Seven sci-fi models for the Space Force
Trump wants a Space Force. Seven sci-fi stories have already considered the possibility.
“The time has come,” Vice President Mike Pence said on August 9, 2018, “to establish the United States Space Force.” Predictably, the announcement was met with controversy. Some have argued that the militarization of space runs counter to the peaceful, scientific ethos of NASA’s longstanding mission. Others considered that it was a necessary step to keep up with Russian and Chinese satellite-destroying missile initiatives. Still others believed that, while the U.S. has to keep up with the militarization of space by other powers—it doesn’t need to rebrand what has already been going on under other, preexisting Air Force initiatives.
But the Space Force’s impending creation has also generated a lot of parody. Stephen Colbert quipped that he wanted to give a shout out to “our fighting boys on the asteroid belt.” One YouTuber even set Pence’s speech to music from the Halo video game franchise—a canny combination revealing how the plot of world history is running remarkably (and terrifyingly) close to the plot of a blockbuster movie or high-concept video game.
Perhaps we would be able to take the Space Force and its debate more seriously if it hadn’t seemed like a characteristically…
