Do Space Pilgrims Get Turkey?

By Lisa Fary

The pilgrims came here so you could spend all day pouring your resentment into a meal that won’t live up to your mother-in-law’s expectations.

Thanksgiving kind of blows.

There is so much pressure to make a perfect meal, wear pants, have a perfect house for your family and friends (who are only there so they don’t have to clean up their kitchens).  Throw in football games, fighting kids, and a pile of crusty dishes and it’s kinda hard to come up with something to be thankful for.  Sure, you’re totally thankful that you have the means to cook this huge meal and have all these people to share it with.  But, by the time the gang is going around the table saying what they’re thankful for, it’s hard not to say, “I’m thankful you all live three hours away.”

However, it makes sense that Thanksgiving blows because being a colonist blows.  Particularly being a space colonist.  HIstoricaly, being a colonist meant you were desperate, oppressed, ignorant, or a criminal.  In science fiction, being a colonist usually means Earth is so trashed that it can no longer sustain life.

Let’s take a look at our grim, colonial future!

Lost in Space:  Earth’s massive population was quickly exhausting natural resources, leading the Space Family Robinson to leave Earth and find new home for humankind.  And what happened to them?  They got lost. In space.

Earth 2: Here, Earth is already uninhabitable, but instead of colonizing, humans live in space stations orbiting the planet.  The one team that does head out to colonize Planet G889 is in cryogenic sleep for twenty-two years and then crash lands on the surface. On the total opposite side of where they’re supposed to be.  It’s intergalactic camping and a hike!

Firefly: OK, life in Firefly seems pretty cool.  You get to zip around in a space ship with witty people and a hot babe captain like Mal Reynolds.  Outside the ship and anyplace other than the core planets, life is pretty rough.  It’s the 26th century and you’re driving around in a . . . wagon?  Drawn by oxen?  And every outer rim planet looks like Arizona.   Oh, and you might get eaten by Reavers.

Of course, being a space colonist isn’t always that bad. If you went to the off-world colonies in Blade Runner, you could get your own Replicant. But, they have a habit of rebelling, like most artificial intelligence.

Colonization in science fiction also doesn’t always mean hurling yourself into the black looking for a better life on a planet that isn’t dying.  In Battlestar Galactica, humanity had settled in the twelve colonies, although it’s not clear exactly where they were settling from.  Colonies should be under the control of a larger state. In BSG, they’re not.  Or they just have a different definition of “colony” they way the original series had a different definition of “yarn”.  For me, yarn is something colorful with which to make legwarmers. To the original BSG fugitives, it was a unit of measurement. Or time. Or something.  Anyway, they wound up having that pesky, rebellious artificial intelligence problem, too.

Whether it’s Lost in Space, Firefly, or BSG, it all points to the same thing: giving your mother-in-law the stink eye over a mouthful of dry turkey is a hell of a lot better than being a pilgrim, even in space.  Happy Thanksgiving.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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