Hit the Books: Sci-Fi Is A Genre Everyone Should Read

Well, yes.  ABSOLUTELY.  Oh, and who made this observation?  Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.  Here is a great bit of literary criticism after the fold:

But science fiction is not really about science.  A book like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels really captures what science fiction is about.  Writing in a scientific and enlightened era, Swift knew his readers wanted plausible explanations that helped them suspend disbelief and follow his plot.  Swift made the manner of Gulliver’s travels consistent with the scientific knowledge of the day; the countries he described are located in remote locations that were still unexplored in Swift’s time. As a result, Gulliver’s voyages to Lilliput, Brobdinag, the land of the Houyhnhnms and Laputa were consistent with what was scientifically known at the time — just as C.S. Lewis worked in his famous space trilogy to make Dr. Elwin Ransom’s voyages to Malacandra and Perelandra consistent with the science his readers would know.  (The houyhnhnms are related to the Malacandrian hrossa in many ways, just as Swift’s yahoos look a lot like Lewis’ Weston and Divine.)  The books describe voyages to Lilliput and Mars — but the subject is always home.

Science fiction is perhaps best understood by an alternative name for the genre: speculative fiction.  It is fiction that asks questions about the human condition and the meaning of life by taking us beyond everyday life.  We go to strange planets, far distant futures or even to our own past — in order to learn about who we really are.  Science fiction takes its readers to far off galaxies in order to help them understand life on earth more clearly — just as Dorothy traveled to Oz to learn what Kansas was really all about. 

Oh, yes.