The Future We Promised Ourselves – And Why We’re Not at Warp Yet

Shahzad Sheikh staring at the Starship Enterprise from a shuttlecraft window

I’ve always loved Star Trek for its vision of a hopeful, united, intelligent humanity. But as the USS Enterprise prepares to warp into the future, I can’t help but wonder – have we stranded ourselves in the past?

Stardate: Right-Here-Right-Now

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved Star Trek. Not because of the phasers, photon torpedoes, or the occasional red-shirt casualty (though let’s be honest, those were fun too). No – it was the future it promised. A future built on intellect, compassion, curiosity, and progress. A future where humanity finally grew up, stopped arguing about nonsense, cured disease, ended hunger, explored the stars – and had the decency to put cup holders on shuttlecraft.

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12/11/2025 0

The Day They Came For Our Cars

Piece of fiction. Or could it become fact in the not-too-distant future?

TThe day they came for our cars, was the day they took Dad. It was way back in the mid-2020s, right when the crackdown… can I say that now? Dare I use such words? I guess it’s been long enough. Anyway, it was back when the cool cars all first started disappearing.

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06/03/2023 2

Doctor Who tackles Partition

Another landmark episode – that’s two incredibly moving and powerful stories already, in a single new series with a ground-breaking new Doctor

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17/12/2018 0

The Marineris Hotel

Holidays on the moon? The wretched ambitions of the space visionary.

Cigart manoeuvred the service pod to a gentle landing. He put it as close as the safety protocols would allow, to the ragged precipice of the solar system’s grandest canyon, Valles Marineris, on Mars.

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22/10/2016 0

The Flight of The Red Bird

The world’s greatest racing driving is hiding a secret and is on the run.

That was close.

Tangling with security forces anywhere in the known galaxy was never a good idea. To attempt to walk into somewhere like a British RAF base on this planet and demand to see the personnel files of all the pilots, even if you were disguised as a senior internal investigations operative, with convincing credentials, always carried more than a little element of risk.

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26/10/2015 0

Alien Resurrections

A man awakens naked in an alien place with no memory of anything.

Stirring to consciousness, awakening I think. Ow! That’s bright. Blinding bright. I squint, attempting a cautious half-open-eye approach. Nah, still too much whiteness. It’s intense.

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11/07/2014 2

‘Stang Struck (fiction)

The car that gate-crashed the future and turned the gatekeeper.

“Enjoy your weekend, dude!”

Before responding, Rick signed off his terminal and gently brushed his hand over the sleek, transparent monitor, ensuring all confidential files were securely stored within the intricate web of firewalls — a procedure that might seem tedious but was, in fact, nearly instantaneous. “You too, buddy. Got any exciting plans?”

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29/06/2014 11