I used to think creativity and imagination had nothing to do with science until I heard that a significant number of NASA scientists had developed their interests through reading and watching science fiction. While Gene Roddenberry was boldly going, courtesy of fantastic warp drive technology, these chaps were figuring out how to build it. So now we have scanners Dr McCoy would find handy, information tablets that outclass the gizmos a red shirt would offer to the Captain for signature, and communication devices that can access the world, not just one contact point. There’s probably an app in development for the beaming up capability.

For me, the cross over comes in imagining something that doesn’t exist yet and, in both my worlds, this needs to be fairly soundly based in current evidence or to be at least conceptually feasible. The project using virtual world technology, reported in the Essl Foundation Social Index, is a gratifying example of how that can work. The paper was invited on the basis of our earlier reports. You can find it on page 134 if you wish to delve.