The Purpose of Science Fiction

[S]cience-fiction writers … get to talk about the real meaning of research. We’re not beholden to skittish funding bodies and so are free to speculate about the full range of impacts that new technologies might have—not just the upsides but the downsides, too. And we always look at the human impact rather than couching research in vague, nonthreatening terms. … We also aren’t bound by nondisclosure agreements, the way so many commercial and government scientists are. Indeed, a year before the first atomic bomb was built, the FBI demanded that the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, recall its March 1944 issue, which contained a story by Cleve Cartmill detailing how a uranium-fission bomb might be built. Science-fiction writers began the public discourse about the actual effects of nuclear weapons (see for instance Judith Merril’s classic 1948 story “That Only a Mother,” which deals with gene damage caused by radiation). We also were among the first to weigh in on the dangers of nuclear power (see for example Lester del Rey’s 1956 novel Nerves). Science fiction is the WikiLeaks of science, getting word to the public about what cutting-edge research really means.”

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