Why science fiction helps us think about the future
Long before the engineers, writers were dreaming up rockets, robots and satellites. A look back at a genre that does not predict the future, but teaches us how to argue about it. Science fiction has never claimed to predict the future. It does something better: it asks 'what if…?' and follows the answer all the way through. What if we could leave Earth? What if a machine began making decisions for us? What if the climate tipped over? Each story is a thought experiment carried to its conclusion, with characters there to feel the effects. The American author Frederik Pohl is credited with a line that sums up the exercise: a good science fiction story does not just predict the car, it predicts the traffic jam. In other words, the invention matters less than what it changes in our lives. That is what makes the genre such a remarkable laboratory of ideas.
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