You know the game, or maybe you don't.

You're in an airplane, and it crashes. You're going to be stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean for a long time. Probably years. Maybe forever.

You get to choose who will be able to stay on your island. Do you want the doctor sitting next to you? The Marine sergeant? The English professor? The drug dealer? The scientist? The accountant? How do you choose? Who do you want? What qualities do you look for? Go to the discussion board and play the game. Define and discuss your choices.

Think about what your choices, what you feel is necessary for survival, say about you--and your needs and expectations. What are the essential human skills? What does it take to be considered a competent human being?

According to Lazarus Long (one of SF's most memorable characters), "a human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly." How many of those do you feel are necessary? How many can you accomplish?

Even more than the stories of space exploration, stories of space colonies can be about competence. What qualities, in the founders and in the world, are important in founding a new world? Writers and readers can imagine, as you just did on the discussion board, the results from restructuring the world.

Did you notice, when you played the game (if not, go back and look), that your choices in the desert island experiment are really about you? not the people you choose?

When SF writers tell stories about the future, or about alien people or places, it gives them a chance to comment, indirectly, on their own people and places. The imagined colony can be different from the present world (and in other ways the same), but the differences are where the meaning is often expressed.