I'm cautiously optimistic about "Enterprise." The producers have stated that in the recent manifestations of "Star Trek," space travel, encountering alien cultures, etc., etc., has become too much "all in a day's work." They want to get back to the "Sense of Wonder" that characterized some of the earlier science fiction (circa Thirties and Forties). Space ships are new and unreliable. They can malfunction and kill you -- or leave you stranded hundreds of billions of miles from anywhere. Space travel is new. Space travel is dangerous. Space travel is scary. We don't know what in the hell is out here. But we're gonna go take a look anyway.

One of my favorite SF novels is from the Forties: The Star Kings by Edmund Hamilton. It's pure space opera. The science is questionable, the writing is almost amateurish, and the plot is highly improbably -- but what a hell of a story! Twentieth century man transported thousands of years into the future and the things he finds himself in the midst of. Image: the morning sun (Canopus) shining on the crystal mountains of Throon. Alien invaders, Really Bad Guys who can be stopped only with a Doomsday weapon that the Good Guys are reluctant to use because it can destroy space itself. Breathtaking stuff.

If "Enterprise" can come up with one percent of the eye-popping, white-knuckle, page-turning Sense of Wonder that The Star Kings had, I'll be satisfied.

Don Firth