Everyday Canvas

On Science Fiction

Prompt: Do you find science fiction stories to be thought experiments since they seem to ask questions on the probabilities and complications about the ethics of any science or philosophy?

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Yes, I do, and history proves that.

Science fiction, as well as being fiction, sometimes makes a significant contribution to or predicts scientific and technological discoveries. Those of us who were awed by Spiderman shouldn’t be that surprised to watch the climber who climbed the Trump Tower in NYC just within the recent weeks. The suction cups the climber was using reminded me of the way Spiderman went up anything. Then, anyone remember Captain Nemo of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? It has now become a fact. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles has the humankind colonizing Mars. Such a project is in the making now. Also, in Matrix, virtual reality and real life are indistinguishable as it is becoming so in our time.

In addition, there are actual items that were first mentioned in science fiction that we are now using, as this web page shows:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kasiagalazka/science-fiction-things-that-actually-exist...

Unfortunately for my memory, I can’t recall the titles of recent Sci-Fi related books I have read, but what I can remember is that the ethics of science and morality are strictly adhered to or questioned or changed a bit in comparison to those in our times, such as: do unto others; no one should steal another’s invention; greed can be deadly; love has its own rewards…

There are also other science fiction works whose ideas haven’t reached fruition only because the writer gave it a time frame, for example, George Orwell’s 1984. It doesn’t mean that what the book depicts will not come true, but it just didn’t come true in 1984.

Science Fiction has a direct impact in our lives, if not for anything but for impressing the young and steering them toward the study of science and related areas. For example, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Steve Wozniak, and Jack Cover (inventor of Taser) credit the 1920s and 1930sTom Swift series for inspiring them.

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction. We humans have to speculate or dream of something first to bring it into reality later. Possibly for this reason or for making an adjustment to it, science fiction texts may be set in the future, in space, a different world, universe, or dimension. Even so, they take off from their writers’ information about the world we live in. If not for anything but that, they are extremely relevant to our lives.