Is all the good science fiction disappearing because disclosure is going to take place very soon? After all what production company or writer wants to invest in a genre soon to be overtaken by reality?

I started watching science fiction at the ripe old age of six. I was in the UK and it was 1960 and what I watched was Torchy the Battery Boy. Television was monochrome and the USA and the USSR were involved in a space race but for me it was Torchy.

Maybe that’s why I’m a bit of a purist when we define Science Fiction. For me the two words have equal importance. I like a good dollop of science in my fiction. I mean I enjoyed other genres but to call I Dream of Jeannie or The Munsters “Science Fiction”, give me a break.

 So a big “yes” to Lost in Space, Star Trek, Time Tunnel and even Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and a big no to Bewitched and The Curse of Dracula.  Call the last two shows anything you like, fantasy, gothic horror whatever but do not call them Science Fiction.

I wanted to establish my definition because at the moment everyone is making series about vampires or werewolves or superheroes. All fine and noble and I know people like them but as I said before they are not ( at least for me ) Science Fiction. Speaking as someone who watched the original first ever Dr Who I feel I have some credibility here.

The last fifty years have been a Golden Age for SciFi. There are too many great shows to mention them all. Here’s a few to jog your memory, Star Trek (original, NG, DS9, Voyager ) Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, Babylon Five, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The X Files,  Firefly, Stargate SG1 and all it’s spin-offs. That’s just a smattering. There were even decent comedy shows such as 3rd Rock, Red Dwarf and Mork and Mindy (sorry).

But as the number of reported UFO sightings have sky rocketed so the Sci Fi series have diminished.  Dr Who is back but providing a strangely hollow experience because the writers have worked out that a time traveller can do just about anything and also never die. Stargate Universe has been cancelled because it doesn’t deliver the “right” audience demographic and we’re left with a few specials like The Event and Outcasts. Now I realise I may have missed a few out because I don’t tend to watch much TV anymore but even so there’s a distinct dearth of quality, reliable hard core, hardware-toting, hardware heavy scifi.

Same in the cinema really. The Star Trek franchise has seemingly evaporated like Spock in a transporter and Sigourney is relegated to a sap in Avatar. Inception is touted as the thinking mans Rocky whilst having a plot that has more holes in it than McGyvers underwear.

I don’t think this is a co-incidence. For years ufologists have wondered if the media was involved in “preparing us” for Disclosure. Close Encounters, Flight of the Navigator, the Last Starfighter all the Alien films, Terminator, Predator, all could be accused of preparing us. Have they decided we’re as prepared as we’ll ever be?

In a few years the commercialisation of Space will start. Space tourists are about to become a reality. Space, was previously only accessible to governments, now anyone with enough money will be able to go.

The people who can afford it and who want to go are unlikely to remain silent for very long when the EBE’s start flashing lights and toothy grins at them. Is it realistic to ask them all to sign a non-disclosure agreement? How long before one of these wealthy , independently minded space-farers spills the beans ( messy in space ).

Seriously. Imagine space in twenty years with rich people from all over the world zipping about. How long before disclosure becomes inevitable? It’s one thing to threaten and cajole a farmer from Wisconsin into silence but that may not go down to well with a self made industrialist from India who cannot be easily intimidated, bought or influenced.

So Disclosure is coming, five years tops. So now do you see why they don’t want to make scifi. Who wants to be laughed at by a bunch of Aliens? The world will be getting all the scifact it wants instead of having scifi. And who would know about Disclosure before any of the rest of us? Those film and TV producers and writers who have been helping to prepare us for so long, that’s who.

So it’s goodbye to good scifi, hello to Vlad and his shape shifting husky, at least until the tourists start shooting skywards. Come on Richard get that bloody thing in the air, I miss Stargate.