What if nobody wrote science fiction? Imagine a world without it. Our only stories would be set in the world of our everyday experience or some fantasy world involving fairy-tale beings, supernatural beings, or superheroes.  Any of these stories can be profound and/or entertaining if written competently. And any could explore the human condition, offer lessons in the consequences of behavior or evoke a deep emotion.

Perhaps such storys have existed since the days of Lucy, the early australopithecine who lived about 3.2 million years ago? Maybe such stories are a key element of who we are as a thinking species. Alas, we have no records of what our far-distant ancestors might have spoken about while sitting around their campfires. We can reasonably infer that they must have.

And what about science fiction? Science fiction is a recent literary genre. Most people credit Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel. Shelley’s story is a cautionary tale: it raises profound questions about who should have the right to create living things, and what responsibility the creators should have to their creations and to society.

Arguably, hers had precedents. For instance, Lucian of Samosata, born around 125 AD, wrote about travelling to the Moon.

Science fiction established itself as a genre (relatively) recently, when science and technology became prominent part of human culture starting with the Industrial Revolution. Regarding the importance of science fiction, historian Yuval Noah Harari believes it has the power to shape public opinion. Yuval has authored bestsellers such as, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011),  Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). In the latter, he wrote: Art plays a key role in shaping people’s view of the world, and in the twenty-first century ‘science fiction’ is arguably the most ‘important genre’ of all, for it shapes how most people understand things like ‘AI’, ‘bioengineering’ and ‘climate change’.

Let’s examine further why science fiction must be taken seriously. In my opinion, multiple-award winning author Robert J. Sawyer best captures the essence of science fiction (SF) as being the literature of intriguing juxtapositions, as well as its role for engaging readers with the burning issues of the present day.

In his blog What is Science Fiction?, he defined it as the mainstream literature of a plausible alternative reality . In his essay The Purpose of Science Fiction, he posited the genre as the literature of plausible change, to explore the implications of the plausible changes, with the italics being mine. For instance, how can humanity survive to beyond a billion years, by which time the Sun has already cooked the Earth to an uninhabitable state?

What’s valuable about this for societies is that science-fiction writers explore these issues in ways that working scientists simply can’t.

At the core of science fiction is the notion of extrapolation, of asking, “if this goes on, where will it lead?” Can we use the power of storytelling about the future as a toolkit to create experiences of the future? And can SF reflect the realities of one’s own culture? That said the SF writer’s job is not to predict the future. Rather, it’s to suggest all the possible futures–so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go. In my opinion, SF should conjure the magic of awe. To me, this ability to evoke wonder is the key. Ideally, after reading, a reader should say out loud, “Wow!” For a deeper dive into SF and wonder, click the link in this sentence.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Monday February 24, 2025