An old science fiction plot has always intrigued me.
Billions of miles from Earth, a starship loaded with settlers headed to a distant star runs into grave trouble.
Not expecting a response, they broadcast an appeal for help.
Confusion overwhelms them when indeed a much cooler looking starship from earth comes immediately to their aid.
How could help have come so soon? They are informed that interstellar travel is commonplace now.
These days an e-mail can travel from one side of the planet to another in milliseconds.
This lightening method of communication is one of millions of scientific achievements science has gifted us with in the last few decades.
How we live and work is dictated in large part by these changing technologies, and they do change fast.
I remember a time when it was an insult to say, "Come on were you born yesterday?" Nowadays that may be easily taken as a compliment.
It's these kids born yesterday and the day before that who know technologies us older folks don't have a clue about.
If you have ever ordered magazines just to check out your client's needs, you know the shipping and handling charges hurt.
And by the time you got those copies via snail-mail the world had moved on.
Agendas and themes are in constant flux.
Or you got a note that said, "Loved your story, but our magazine went out of business six weeks ago.
" My reaction to this was to return to writing what I wanted to write.
I'd give these editors quality work and maybe they would recognize it as quality and ignore an issue's theme or word count limits to print it.
Fat chance! In the land of snail mail even the most illiterate editor is King.
They announced their verdicts from on high.
They were the final say on what inked words would dry on the clean white paper.
Magazine editors ruled that world; but we don't live in that world anymore.
We live in a world where e-zine editors rate the material submitted as to its level of competence.
They then categorize it and send it through or send it back to the writer for correction.
They follow strict guidelines and rules on content and quality, but don't elevate themselves above the material.
No longer do you have to pay a couple thousand dollars to have your story printed up.
But do we older writers realize just how much things have changed? If we are to take advantage of the hundreds of solutions available on the internet, we must find a way not to beat the next generation but to join it.
It could be that we are like the space travelers who started out eons ago thinking since we started so long before anyone else we would arrive at the destination in first place.
We think of the new generation, those born yesterday, with a chuckle as we watch our destination star coming nearer and nearer.
"We should be there any eon from now," we say as something flashes by us.
Maybe we should humble ourselves and radio a distress call like, "Please, stop and pick us up!"