From Robert Scholes “The Roots of Science Fiction”
“When romance returns deliberately to confront reality it produces the various forms of didactic romance or fabulation that we usually call allegory, satire, fable, parable, and so on…traditionally, it has been a favorite vehicle for religious thinkers, precisely because religions have insisted that there is more to the world than meets the eye, that the common-sense view of reality - “Realism” is incomplete and therefore false. Science, of course, has been telling us much the same thing for several hundred years…thus it is not surprising that what we call ‘science’ fiction should employ the same narrative vehicle as the religious fictions of our past.”
Science fiction latches onto many of the same questions as religion, but no one novel that I am aware of tries to answer all of them. The existence of evil is the most common question addressed, but free will v. fate, equality v inequality, our relationship with nature, and our origins are all questions SF authors have struggled with. Books like “Dune,” “Foundation,” and “The Lord of the Rings” have directly shaped more minds than any book of philosophy. Philosophers may have indirectly shaped more minds, because more popular authors have read their books, but a literary game of connections gets too complicated for me.
Science fiction latches onto many of the same questions as religion, but no one novel that I am aware of tries to answer all of them. The existence of evil is the most common question addressed, but free will v. fate, equality v inequality, our relationship with nature, and our origins are all questions SF authors have struggled with. Books like “Dune,” “Foundation,” and “The Lord of the Rings” have directly shaped more minds than any book of philosophy. Philosophers may have indirectly shaped more minds, because more popular authors have read their books, but a literary game of connections gets too complicated for me.