Episode IV: A New Hopelessness

In a couple of his Bleats this past week, James Lileks focused on the immediate post-WWII emotional fortitude of what he dubbed “nerd culture“, young men who longed for the technological future that sci-fi promised, when that genre was at its lowest ebb:

You can almost imagine the sighs from the readers, who were doubtlessly male, 20s or early 30s, and desperately interested in the future. If only I could live there now. If only I lived in an age of rockets and spacemen and ray guns and monsters. Of course, people still think this today. I thought this when I was growing up. The difference, however, is this: I had Star Trek. I