The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Science fiction is not strictly about the future but about recognizing things that are different from the present.
- In plain terms
- The genre focuses on awareness of difference rather than just predicting the future.
- What can you take from it?
- Science fiction can explore alternative presents not just future worlds.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes a story science fiction?
- How does art reflect change?
Another view
Some definitions of the genre strictly require futuristic settings.
More from Neal Stephenson
For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's…
Permalink to quote #2 I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful…
Permalink to quote #3 In your high school geology class you probably were taught that all life on earth exists in a paper-thin shell called the biosphere, which is trapped between t…
Permalink to quote #4
Related quotes
Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
Brian AldissBrian Aldiss quote #2 We have such a mixture now, such a fusion of different genres.
Ryszard KapuscinskiRyszard Kapuscinski quote #5 One of the objections I have against Campbell's Astounding was that there was too little love in it. It was a very loveless magazine. They never took enough ac…
Brian AldissBrian Aldiss quote #7