The True Power of Science Fiction

It’s not just about pew-pew lasers and cranial ridges you know

Science fiction as a genre is often sneered at by literary types as time-wasting pop-culture trash. In this article I will explain what science fiction means to me, and why it is not at all a frivolous genre.

The Human Condition

The best use of science fiction is when it allows us a peek at humanity in ways that other genres cannot. By posing outlandish ‘what ifs’, we can explore human nature from new angles. In fiction, we often see stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Science-fiction really allows us to go to town with the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ part.

What if you met a duplicate of yourself? What if you discovered you were not human, but a robot? What if you were thrown into another dimension, a time loop, an alternate history, or a simulation? These kinds of stories prompt us to think about how we would react in those situations, giving us a tool to better understand ourselves.

To people who are not a fan of the genre, these premises may seem silly and nonsensical, but the premise is not the point. The science-fiction premise is merely the extraordinary catalyst for probing the human spirit in ways that real life cannot. Scientists often perform experiments where they put test subjects in situations beyond what would be found in nature, in order to see how systems react to extremes. Science-fiction is a…