Although much of my writing focuses on fantasy, I enjoy dabbling in the realm of science fiction, too, from time to time. I grew up reading Heinlein, McCaffrey, Card, LeGuin, Asimov, Bradbury... all the while dreaming of a future in which the magic of technological possibility had finally arrived.

I love my cell phone--so much like those Star Trek communicators--but I can't use it to get myself beamed off the planet.

I love the fact that we have ships that travel into orbit on a regular basis, but they have yet to travel between the stars.

I know there are others who share both my enthusiasm and my disappointment. Young Triston, for example, was tremendously disappointed to learn that he wouldn't be getting a light saber for Christmas--not a real one, anyway. He's still convinced that the trouble lies in his age, rather than in the imaginary nature of the weapon itself.

"You could get one for yourself," he says, "because you're a grown-up. And then maybe for Christmas I could just hold it for a minute..."

But I do love those moments--those precious, beautiful moments--when it dawns on me that we might be approaching those dreams more rapidly than I had realized.

Last week I was down with the flu--this week too, truth be known--and in the midst of my self-pitying misery, as I was bewailing my abject boredom to an empty room, the cell phone rang. Much to my surprise, it was a computer calling me from Blockbuster, reminding me that I had movies due in the store.

Okay, the computer didn't know I was sick, it didn't know I was bored, and it wasn't calling to remind me that I could watch those movies. It was calling to remind me to return them. But in my bed-ridden delirium, the two scenarios seemed pretty close.

Maybe we're halfway there after all.