Essay 1: What is Science Fiction? – Science Fiction: Humanity, Technology, the Present, the Future

Science fiction presents contemporary concerns through surrealist and fantastical metaphors. Stories of aliens and warfare, of technology and advancement, of utopia and fallibility hardly describe visions of pure fantasy. Instead, these plots reconcile existing strife, or at the very least, anticipate the pains that lay in the future if current trajectories are left unencumbered.

The original version of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds manifests an alien invasion at the heart of the British Empire. Superficially, the tale was not out of the ordinary. Popular literature of the day envisioned the foreign powers attacking European homelands, and public perceptions swayed with these narratives. Fears of coming war were well-founded, and in many ways, the tripods’ attacks on southern England forecast the gruesomeness of the next century.

Yet, science fiction’s grandeur also provides cover, enabling authors to subtly consider ideas that are even less palatable to the masses than global warfare. […]