Science fiction has never been about the future; it’s always been about the present day whether it’s Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I’m writing about.
Author : Robert J. Sawyer
I think there’s always been, to some degree, a misunderstanding about what science fiction is all about, in that it has been judged by the general public as being literature of prediction, and it isn’t.
Science fiction has always used metaphors and disguises, talking about alien civilizations or the future.
Many science-fiction writers, such as Gregory Benford, are working scientists. Many others, such as Joe Haldeman, have advanced degrees in science. Others, like me, have backgrounds in science and technology journalism.
Science fiction should not be dismissed as escapism. It is a profound vehicle for talking about social and political issues.
Hard science fiction, which is what I write, often is rightly criticized for having either negligible or unbelievable characterization, but the science I’ve actually studied most post-secondarily is psychology, and characterization is the art of dramatizing psychological principles.
One of the standard story-generating engines for science fiction is to take something we normally think of as metaphoric and treat it as if it were literal.
Regrettably, with ‘2001’ having a title that had a year in it, science fiction essentially set itself up in the public’s imagination as saying, ‘Here’s what you get if you wait to that year.’ Well, we all waited till that year, and we didn’t get anything at all like that.
There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Of those four, the first three were all published principally in science-fiction magazines. They were preaching to the converted.
Print science fiction writers often do consulting for government bodies.