Risa

When I was younger, I watched Star Trek for the lasers and technobabble and I really enjoyed it. Then I got my first job interning at a government aerospace engineering lab. One of my bosses was an ex-Navy engineer, and we got to talking about AI drones and all that.

He told me that he was opposed to anything that made war less bloody because it would make going to war easier and easier, less and less costly. He made that argument through the lens of this Star Trek episode, wherein two planets go to virtual war with one another in a bid to preserve their culture and wind up in a centuries-long forever war. It was a short anecdotal conversation, but one that stuck with me and I still think about it today. Probably one of the first times that I realized that science fiction wasn't just there to entertain me with cool characters and settings, but to really make an argument about what society should be.

I haven't seen the new series yet. Hopefully they carry on that legacy well.