Every civilization makes its own myths. The ancients told of gods descending to Earth. The Middle Ages made legends of saints and dragons. The Age of Discovery had its tales of unknown lands and oceans. Somewhere in each of those ages there was a fire, and someone who knew how to hold a circle of listeners until the logs turned to ash.
Our own myths are only beginning to take shape. They no longer wear the faces of Zeus or Odin. New figures are stepping forward:
a scientist who goes beyond the limits of what is known,
an artificial intelligence learning what consciousness is,
a civilization trying to survive the death of its star.
J. R. R. Tolkien gave the work of mythmakers a name in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”: sub-creation, the making of a secondary world that rings true from the inside. I find the idea consoling, because it reaches back to the first storyteller at the fire and forward to anyone who sits down tonight to write tomorrow’s stories.
Science fiction today does some of the work that ancient stories once did. It helps us understand what we have not yet lived through. Before humanity travels to the stars, it has to tell itself that the journey is possible. This is why writing about the future is, at bottom, the making of new myths.
And every myth begins with a single story.