Stargate Parallels Reality ow closely do Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis parallel our reality? In both fiction and the real world, the point man is usually black, and from an unsophisticated background. World-changing technology is kept secret and under strict military control. The first human presence in an unknown zone is an unmanned military vehicle. The first human entrants to any promising area arrive in combat fatigues, with weapons at the ready. These people claim to represent Earth, and yet are overwhelmingly North American and white. There is a strong and unfounded tendency to assume cultural and moral superiority over less technologically advanced nations. Despite numerous occurrences of individual death, and wholesale destruction, there are lax rules governing contact. The human military are usually considered above foreign/alien legal systems. The primary objective is to secure weapons or resources. The only time that the North Americans are seen to pack up and go home is when they come up against a technologically equal nation/world. The humans insist that their way of life is better than any foreign/alien way, despite the foreign/alien cultures having successfully existed for many centuries longer than their own. The big differences between fiction and reality are in how worlds designated as friendly by the Stargate crews are depicted. Always, we see them retaining their individuality and cultural idiosyncrasies. Humanity's self-appointed representatives treat them with respect. But if the Stargate actually existed, things would be rather different. Within six months of contact the aliens would've been sold golden arches, a talking mouse and a dead rock star. In five years, their own culture would've become polluted with trash TV, Bible-bashing maniacs and the lingering threat of "do it our way or die." After a decade, some worlds would've concluded that exported Earth-style democracy and transworld capitalism were killing them and moved to bounce us back where we belong. Meanwhile, those who controlled the stargates on Earth would likely brand their former friends as godless/Goa'uld worshipping insurgents, and new targets in the intergalactic war on terror. Thus do reality and fiction blur into a maelstrom of what Norman Schwarzkopf called bovine scatology. All of which makes me hope that if stargate technology is ever discovered, it's by a Swiss Buddhist. Nathan Brazil (This is taken from SCIFI.com SciFi Weekly Letters to the Editor)

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