That’s a fantastic point about science fiction. There are two things I find exciting about sci fi: the space opera and the morality stories.
Science fiction was initially attractive because of the former, but the way the morality stories made me think about the world around me is what’s made me want to delve deeper and deeper into the classics.
Concrete examples:
The Mote In God’s Eye on xenophobia and the seemingly intractable problem of diplomatic entente between nation states where one or both are threatened with survival.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on revolutionary colonial politics.
Speaker for the Dead on the corruption of ecologies that we fundamentally don’t understand.
Real literature has never felt accessible to me. Sci-fi gave me a joy of reading that Candide never did.
Science fiction was initially attractive because of the former, but the way the morality stories made me think about the world around me is what’s made me want to delve deeper and deeper into the classics.
Concrete examples:
The Mote In God’s Eye on xenophobia and the seemingly intractable problem of diplomatic entente between nation states where one or both are threatened with survival.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on revolutionary colonial politics.
Speaker for the Dead on the corruption of ecologies that we fundamentally don’t understand.
Real literature has never felt accessible to me. Sci-fi gave me a joy of reading that Candide never did.