Why Science Fiction Is Important

Science fiction has long been maligned as a subpar genre of literature. That sentiment has legitimate roots, of course. The major criticism of the genre, and why it has been frowned upon in higher literary circles, is that it is not sufficiently reverent towards the human spirit. Specifically, the gem of civilization has always been that it produces beings that have a depth of consciousness, that is in many ways, so complex, and so wonderful, that it constitutes an end in itself, a new perfect thing, that has a place in creation alongside the animals and plants and flowers and mountains. Of course the sanctity of the human soul is something to be protected.

And of course, historically, science fiction has generally been found to be heavy on the plot and environment, to the detriment of its focus on the fineness of the hero's character and consciousness. But what a more careful look will show, is that that lack of depth is purposeful, that it exists in order to allow the reader space to contemplate the particularities of their life, of the society in which they live. In a sense, a large part of any work of science fiction, and particularly of the characters that dwell in those worlds, is the contemplation of the specifics of existence. The general religious view towards life, and civilization as it progresses, is that the human soul stays fixed, and that technology is basically trivia that exists in the ever fixed stage of the human experience. The great work of science fiction has been to dismantle that fallacy.

Why Science Fiction Will Lead to a New Renaissance

I mentioned in a previous article that science fiction serves a necessary and important role the sustaining of the integrity of the human psyche, as the world moves into the future. Here I will try to explain its role as a bridge to a new renaissance-like age of art.

The first step to clearing our heads, is to redefine, for ourselves, what exactly science fiction is. One of the main definitions that has been put forward is by the theorist Darko Suvin. He defines the genre as providing 2 functions. One he calls "estrangement", which simply means that the reader senses the events and surrounding of the fictional world, as "feeling" different from ones own. The second condition, which is harder to grasp is "cognition", which means that somehow, the reader looks at the world in such a way that while they find it foreign, they see it as logically built up from some common, basic building block, that is shared with the normal world. This permits the reader to reevaluate his own world thus producing "cognition".