Disney's 'Star Wars'-themed lands prove that science fiction has arrived

Over the weekend at the D23 Expo, Disney announced that it planned to create two new 14-acre "Star Wars" theme lands as part of its Disneyland and Disney World parks. The news, predictably, met with approval from the ranks of "Star Wars" supporters at the event. But the news of Disney's new theme parks has a far larger significance: it shows the extent to which science fiction is eating the world. And that's good news -- science fiction's growing mind share of the nation's youth is creating a stable base of future innovators. Think about it -- the generation that grew up on the Disney animation classics of the post-War era -- "Alice in Wonderland" (1951), "Peter Pan" (1953), and "Sleeping Beauty" (1959) -- has been replaced by a generation that grew up with "Star Wars" and all the other classic science fiction films of the 1970s and early 1980s.