Nine Reasons I Read Science Fiction

1. Neophilia.

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea intro­duced the idea of neophilia to me in their great con­spir­acy the­ory mag­num opus, The Illuminatus Trilogy. Hagbard Celine, the half-Atlantian Discordian sub­ma­rine cap­tain describes the world as being divided into two types of peo­ple– neophiles and neo­phobes; those who are attracted by the new, and those who are repelled by it. I read this book when I was six­teen. I imme­di­ately rec­og­nized myself as a neophile. Science fic­tion writ­ers gen­er­ally attempt to show things that have never been seen before in their work. There is a tra­di­tion of the orig­i­nal within it. If there is a genre of fic­tion that can be described as neophillic, it is sci­ence fic­tion.

2. To chal­lenge my preconceptions.

I grew up in Kansas, which if you read the news at all, is a state where peo­ple are gen­er­ally very con­ser­v­a­tive. Racism is ram­pant. Homophobia was, at least when I was a child, the gen­eral rule. And if you weren’t Christian, then you were going to Hell. It is easy to accept all of these beliefs as fact when you are immersed in them. Even if you don’t agree with them, they find a way to seep into your mind. In that envi­ron­ment, sci­ence fic­tion, with it’s unusual and pro­gres­sive views about gen­der, race, sex, and reli­gion pro­vides an escape, and an alter­nate view point. Ursula K. LeGuin alone chal­lenged much of my pre­con­cep­tions in her work. Whether it was the peo­ple of color in the Earthsea books, or chal­leng­ing the idea of gen­der in The Left Hand of Darkness, her work opened up my mind to a world where cul­tural ideas are not hegemonic.

3. To travel to exotic places with­out leav­ing the house.

Science fic­tion is often set in places that no human being has ever vis­ited before. I love to travel, and with enough time, I could one day see much of what Earth has to offer. And I don’t think there is any sub­sti­tute for get­ting up and actu­ally going to the places. But some places are beyond the reach of a jet plane. Without sci­ence fic­tion, I would never know or imag­ine what the skies of Venus are like, never feel the breeze of an alien wind across my skin, or feel the dread as a small alien space­craft full of humans slips over the event hori­zon of a black hole. Science fic­tion inspires us to push this bound­ary of the lim­its of travel. I know more now about the sur­face of Mars than I could have expected to, ten years ago. I would bet that it was partly sci­ence fic­tion that inspired the NASA sci­en­tists to build the Mars rovers that gave me this knowledge.

4. To be pre­pared for pos­si­ble future.

1984. Fahrenheit 451. These are no longer fic­tion, they’re prac­ti­cally mod­ern day sur­vival guides. Science fic­tion pre­pares us for the “what ifs” of the future. Science fic­tion read­ers as a group are more pre­pared for what comes. We’ve been con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenges and moral dilem­mas of stem cells and cloning long before any­one else. The Singularity may be com­ing, and if any­one will be pre­pared for it, it will be the read­ers and writ­ers of sci­ence fiction.

5. To escape the mundane.

Because I need adven­ture and excite­ment and stim­u­la­tion! I work a desk job. I spend 48+ weeks a year in the same 100 mile square area. I see the same peo­ple, do the same tasks, and walk or drive the same streets day in, day out. Life is repet­i­tive. Science fic­tion allows me to escape that. I don’t want to read about peo­ple who have bor­ing jobs and rela­tion­ship prob­lems with their spouses. I want to read about things that stir sur­prise and amaze­ment in me–what we call sen­sawunda. I don’t get sen­sawunda from my day to day life very often. When I do, it’s a bless­ing. But I know that if I turn to my book shelf, I can get a hefty dose of it any time I want.

6. Because I care about plot.

Science fic­tion sto­ries often deal with Big Things. Saving the world. Saving the uni­verse, even. Plot seems to be more empha­sized in sci­ence fic­tion than it is in other gen­res, and it tends to have a larger scope. The stakes are higher. In the pro­to­typ­i­cal lit­er­ary story, the stakes are a col­lege professor’s mar­riage. Yawn. I want some­thing big on the line. I want schemes from my vil­lains, where the stake is noth­ing less than every­thing the pro­tag­o­nists hold dear. Little sto­ries are nice, from time to time, but its the big sto­ries that hold my atten­tion the best. And sci­ence fic­tion offers those.

7. To learn science.

Reading isn’t just about fun. I like it best when I read fic­tion that teaches me some­thing use­ful along with enter­tain­ing me. I find two gen­res par­tic­u­larly excel at this; his­tor­i­cal fic­tion and sci­ence fic­tion. I love sci­ence for the way it makes sense of the world in a log­i­cal man­ner. And you could argue that some sci­ence fic­tion is really just his­tor­i­cal fic­tion about the future. Both can occa­sion­ally pro­vide life lessons. One is from pre­vi­ous exam­ples and the other from theoretical.

8. Because it’s dan­ger­ous to like it.

Everybody has their way of being dif­fer­ent. For me, it’s being a SF nut. This got me picked on more than a few times in my child­hood. It gets me sneered upon by lit­er­ary writ­ers who hang out at the cof­fee shops around town. To some peo­ple, being a sci­ence fic­tion writer means I am lower on the totem pole than a garbage man. I like that. I don’t have much rebel in me, but I like tak­ing plea­sure in things that those kinds of peo­ple hate.

9. Because it offers hope.

Not all sci­ence fic­tion, but a great deal of it, has offered hope. Hope that the future can be bet­ter than the present. At times, it has fetishized the idea of progress, but when it is at its best, it can give hope to the lowli­est soul that their life, or their children’s lives could be bet­ter than it is today. Yes, there is a great tra­di­tion of dystopia fic­tion in the genre, but I would argue that dystopias are writ­ten from a posi­tion of optimism–that per­haps, if the author lays out their dystopian vision, the world can avoid it. Dystopian writ­ers see some­thing that could go wrong and warn against it. Even this is opti­mistic to me and offers hope.

I am not usu­ally a cheer­leader for sci­ence fic­tion. I think there can be some very bad things about it and its fan­dom. I do not believe that sci­ence fic­tion fans are bet­ter than any­one else. That is not what this post is about. It is about why I per­son­ally con­tinue to read sci­ence fic­tion today, twenty years after I dis­cov­ered my first Anne McCaffery book. I encour­age you to think about why you read sci­ence fic­tion too. Sometimes, we all need a reminder. I know that I did.

Tagged as: futurism, lists, neophilia, reading, SF