Why do we read and write science fiction? A conversation with Sharman Apt Russell discussion

Jules Verne was quoted as saying, "it will all come true..." and it has always struck me that the maxim of "it is impossible for the human brain to imagine anything that is not possible, therefore everything imagined is or will become reality..." are the rules by which sci-fi is governed and, by and large, abides. The time-lag is also interesting. Heinline's "Waldos" are the backbone of industry, as are his ubiquitous video glasses "posting" to an intra-net - both written in the '50s. My most recent sci-fi epistle got this comment "...has its own laws of stretching brains wide with its mind-bending concepts." And so I sit here wondering if I will be right, and if so, when?

I take a different view of science fiction: I think science fiction is always about the present. When I first read Asimov's _Caves of Steel_ and _The Naked Sun_ as a teenager, I thought, "What interesting world-building." When I went back to them as an adult, I said to myself, "D'oh! They're not strange future worlds at all; they're New York City and the suburbs, exaggerated to the point of satire." Science fiction lets authors take current trends and extrapolate them out at new lengths. Sometimes reality catches up with science fiction, but sometimes the real timeline takes a turn nobody expected (How many SF works written before 1991 confidently predicted what the Soviet Union would be doing a century or two later--expecting it to still exist?). But whether the stories come true or not, in my opinion, the best SF stories remain interesting comments on their own time, or on the general business of being human.

C.S. Lewis's essay On Science Fiction is worth reading about SF in general.

That essay was interesting, Pauline! I use C.S. Lewis's ideas on writing children's literature when I teach a class in the writing of that literature: he is always thoughtful.

I agree with both Peter and Pauline. Sci-fi does both. And I remember my first semester in college, back in 1972 (!), taking a provocative class about science fiction as literature--with Ursula le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which was definitely about feminism and gender roles and culture in the 1970s, as well as this interesting future world.

Peter's science fiction, by the way, is The Path, and I think his story is also about both--now and what-if?

C.S. Lewis's essay is and will be always a good guide. And thank you Pauline for the interesting thoughts which I share. The realm of possibility should not be considered void of reality. One often hides in the other and vice versa.

Greetings, Sharman! This group seems to be right up my alley, thank you so much for the invite.:)

I finally have something to say. ;-)

I stopped reading scifi in high school. I read a lot of Asimov and Bradbury and enjoyed the upbeat ways the books portrayed the future (I have to re-read to see if they are as upbeat as I remember). The world was a better place in those books and there was hope that the atomic wars threatened in my childhood (the fifties/sixties) would not happen (or if they did happen, it presaged a better life in the future).

My science fiction reading ended then and I can't say why. But I recently have read all 12 Heinlein Juvenile Fiction books and I felt that hope surging up again. I enjoyed reading them and feeling that nostalgia for times gone by (Heinlein wrote the books while I was growing up). The books may be scifi, but they resonate with the fifties culture and values, and with a bright future full of choices.

Our middle and high school students are reading modern "young adult" scifi now and I read with them (even though I teach math and science). The books are all dystopian and formulaic, so I won't be reading with them much longer. They are depressing and dark.

However, I recently finished reading a non-fiction book on the periodic table that had a very brief section on the first moments of our universe. I wrote the following in my review of the book (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and I feel it sums up, in some weird way, my feelings about science fiction:

In the beginning was hydrogen. With heat and time, hydrogen begat helium. After more heat and billions of more years, helium begat lithium and then beryllium. After billions of more years, and more fusion and collisions and heat, the other elements slowly were created.

We all have read in the news recently about another element that was discovered. The newly discovered elements exist a very short time; hundredths of a second. Why should we care about them? They are, after all, useless to both scientists and laypeople. But this book got me thinking: if there are billions of years left in the universe, and enough heat is available somewhere, would more and more elements be formed naturally and would they seed other worlds and create new types of life? I can’t stop pondering the possibilities.