As an eleven-year-old, I’ll never forget seeing Star Wars (A New Hope) for the very first time. The path of the huge Imperial Star Destroyer simultaneously blazed its way across the screen and my mind. As a young kid I desperately wanted my own X-wing fighter just like Luke Skywalker or fly alongside Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon.

Prior to this baptism of the imagination I’d already been well indoctrinated by my father into scifi by a nightly diet of Star Trek. It was way prior to VCR’s,...