Here's the funny part -- I read it while in the mood to watch a Star Trek movie.

Yeah, here I was at my computer (current desktop background, galaxy NGC 7331 snatched from Astronomy Picture of the Day), checking out my usual handful of science-fiction sites, and thinking, "You know, I could go for some good ol' Star Trek right about now." Being an unreconstructed Star Trek fan from way back, I have a home theater space -- the Temple of Dude -- that unashamedly boasts a DVD collection where thirty-odd years' worth of that "boldly going" pop-cult trekking gets a hefty representin'. There's the original TV series in those yellow, blue, and red pill-shaped, lobster-shell-plastic cases. All the movies except #5, which, whoa, even for me is too unbearable to ever watch again. There's all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, far and away the best of the TV franchise, in those cool transparent book-leaf box sets. An original Wrath of Khan poster hangs on the wall nearby.

As I said, unreconstructed and unashamed. Besides, with the wife out of town on a business trip, I can indulge my inner fanboy without getting The Look.

So anyway, here I was when what do I find at SciFi.com? "Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr. told SCI FI Wire that fantastic space science fiction shows and movies are, in part, responsible for the lack of interest in real-life space exploration among young people."

From Buzz Lightyear to buzz-kill? Say it ain't so!

But sure enough:

"I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today," Aldrin said in an interview during an ice cream party held by the National Geographic Channel at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week. "All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Aldrin doesn't specifically name which titles have put the Ceti Eel in his ear, but his subject is clear enough:

"... if you start dealing with fantasy and beaming people up and down and traveling seven times the speed of light, you are doing damage. You're not helping. You have young people who have got expectations that are far unrealistic, and you can't possibly live up to the expectations you have created in young people. Why do they get bored with the space program? That's why."

The venerable astronaut has long been a welcome popularizer of space science for the general public (I once worked with him during my years doing the same thing), and has even played himself in at least three episodes of The Simpsons. But at age 78 is he succumbing to a perhaps inevitable case of O.F.S. (Old Fart Syndrome)? Is he unfairly short-shrifting the curiosity and imagination of modern sci-fi audiences who have no first-hand memories of the "Space Race" or who may ask if "Sputnik" is the latest hot Facebook app? And does he really think we still use the phrase "rocket ships"?

Or does history's second man to get lunar dust on his boots have a point? While he rightly praises fact-based dramas such as Apollo 13 (I have that poster framed and signed by the film's director and the entire cast), are These Kids Today really "bored" with the space program because they've been fed "unrealistic expectations"? If so, does he correctly point a big space-gloved finger at such fantasical favorites as Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the movies and TV shows that have followed in their hyperspatial wake?

At least one of my colleagues in the Science Fiction Writers of America, J. Steven York, has responded passionately by suggesting that his erstwhile hero "Buzz Off" in two online posts that are making the rounds.

What do you think? We're living in a Renaissance age of astronomical discovery and a boom time for pop science fiction in the movies and on TV. But when those reality-shaking astronomical discoveries fail to arouse the sky-watching passion of previous generations, is fantasy-prone, special-effects-laden science-fiction on our screens really to blame? Or is that like blaming video games for Columbine, or Ryan Seacrest for E! Entertainment?