People used to imagine domes when they imagined the future. There was something oddly confident about the idea. That in the face of certain destruction you could look up at the sky and imagine human life persevering, drifting in a dome surrounded by Venusian clouds. Pressure domes fast against alien shores. If you closed your eyes and breathed deep, you could taste the acrid tang of the recycled air. You could look up through the curvature of glass and plastic and see the universe wheel overhead. You would be part of something full of wonders.
That we could not just survive but thrive in any environment was so human once. Gorged on dreams that were fueled by nuclear power and blind to suffering we could see pieces of Earth spreading across barren worlds, the deepest of oceans, the coldest balls of ice slowly tumbling through the void. The future would be a future.
When the domes started to disappear, they were replaced with nothing. Lush green surrounded by the trappings of technology became cold concrete and decay. The domes of our dreams could survive anything but acid rain and despair. Science fiction became less about leaving the planet for any reason other than bare survival. The heavens were conquered by gods of capital and industry and ruled it like titans. Ascending to the stars not to give meaning and purpose to humanity but to escape its systems to one so wealthy not to care about them. The domes were towers, fortresses to keep others out.
Over time the scope and purpose of the domes became less and less. Still they preserved human life but now on our own planet, and then just barely. Little standouts against the new future. The domes are mostly gone now, living on as illustrations and passed around as photos of tattered book covers. They are a dead future, objects of passing curiosity. Stripped of relevance and meaning. Curious relics of a time when we imagined they would save us. If anything could, I can no longer imagine it. My brain has been steeped in the writing of men who died long before I was born. The futures I dream of are long gone: ancient crypt-dust. I see just enough to see the void encroaching and not enough to know what to do. In my darkest, private moments, I am full of panic.
I hope to look back in the coming decades and see that what we imagined the future will be now is as wrong as the domes. But I won’t forget them.
