The promise of sci-fi is that there is a possibility of a different kind of world. We wrestle with the unshakable feeling that things might stay the same forever. We will be the same people with the same problems in the same kind of messed-up world until we cease to exist. Sci-fi shows us another way. It says, "Look what is possible. Look what we could do with this world if we thought of it differently." It gives us hope that things don't always have to be the way that they are.
Who knows, maybe one day we will have time traveling space crafts and alien friends. Maybe one day things won't be the same ordinary dreck that it usually is, because I'll be able to blast off to a different dimension. It might be an empty promise, but it's a promise nonetheless. And so are the memes that celebrate it.
