by Edward Curtin / June 28th, 2021 Once upon a time in my youthful naiveté, I would mock those who said they believed in out-of-space aliens and flying saucers. In my hubris, I even wrote an extensive academic paper saying that the popularity of science fiction and the myth of planetary escape provided by the UFO cults and the media served the function of distracting us from earthly problems connected to the changing social structure of western societies and the concomitant transformation of our symbol systems from the traditionally religious to the scientific and technologically based. I argued that there was something devious in this new narrative, like the story of astronauts playing golf on the moon. Although I didn’t then say it, I imagined the next public relations stunt would be ping pong on Mars. But I now know that ping pong is a Chinese dominated sport.