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There is a particular and specific moment in the formation of one's world view that takes place at a point in early adolescence, which, at least for me and my friends, was triggered by the reading of science fiction stories. You are there with your book lost in an involving narrative set in the far future, with characters crossing the unimaginable distances of intergalactic space and, all of a sudden, you realise, heartbreakingly and poignantly, that this will never happen to you. The space and time in which the story is set will be forever beyond your experience: you will never ever know whether 'it will be like that' or not. Never. The distances in time are just too vast. And you realise that this is a judgement that is without appeal, no matter what you do, or how hard you yearn, access to this future is forever denied. This realisation is more than the nascent acknowledgment of one's mortality, for that is set within narrower parameters: this is more absolute, it talks of the brief flicker of one's consciousness against the timelines of the universe. Of our heartbreaking insignificance set against the unimaginable vastness of time. It also seems sort of unfair that you're going to be locked out of this fantastic future, no matter how hard you might desire to be there.
In an article about Surfers Paradise in Broadsheet Scott Redford quoted himself: 'Our goal must be nothing less than the establishment of Surfers Paradise on earth: AD 5062'.1 Later this figure re-appears in his All the Time in the World 5062 AD (1996/67) which is laser-cut out of steel, like a totem, a marker, a... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline