We always get the fiction we need

When the first Battlestar: Galactica came out back in the day, the good guys were dashing heroes and the bad guys were nameless, faceless robots. It was a perfect Cold War metaphor, with two nations (one good and one evil) locked in war; it reflected the concerns and challenges of our time.

Today we live in a different age, when the cold war was over and we were faced, instead, with subtler enemies we couldn't always identify: the man who wants to kill you isn't a Russian general with his...