His writings

The Invasions of the Twenty-First Century

غزوات القرن الحادي والعشرين · 2001

Abdeltawab Youssef opened his story series The Invasions of the Twenty-First Century (Dar al-Maaref, 2001) with these questions: why does man fight his brother instead of conquering thirst, hunger and ignorance? Alongside them is his short piece “Space Invasions”, which runs from Abbas ibn Firnas to Sputnik to ask why space travel cannot carry a message of peace. From the English version prepared for his earlier website.

Why does man fight his brother? Why does he invade the land that belongs to others? Why does he encroach on the freedom of others? Why does man not conquer thirst, hunger and drought, poverty and disease, ignorance and illiteracy, fanaticism and terrorism?

Let us cooperate in order to achieve this noble goal!

Space Invasions

Since the dawn of history, man has admired the constellations, and has wondered where rain comes from, how air blows, and how thunder occurs. Man has also always yearned to fly and explore space in an attempt to acquire knowledge. He tried to imitate birds. It all started when Abbas ibn Firnas tried to glue wings to his arms in order to fly, but failed. Finally, man invented the airplane. However, instead of using the airplanes for a good purpose, man uses them as destructive missiles and throws deadly bombs from them to kill other fellow human beings.

Until 1957, man remained confined to the earth. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. With this breakthrough, man started the space invasion. When we first heard the news about Gagarin, we thought he was insane to spend money on space studies. Today, we realize that we were wrong. The Americans took part in the competition and they launched the first satellite in 1961. Since that time, thousands of satellites have been launched by both competitors and by many different countries all over the world. Space now is very crowded with satellites for different purposes.

For a long time, man has used his imagination to write narratives and make movies which depict imaginary creatures from other planets that invade the earth. These fight man and try to destroy life on earth. Why can’t we make space travel a means of portraying peace, not destruction?