Throwback to 2017 when Nature Magazine asked six authors to talk about our “unhinged era” (2017) and how that affects science fiction. Some really great short pieces on the scifi genre in a world “unhinged” at times. I wrote a piece titled The Power of Afrofuturism. Ten out of ten – a compilation well worth a read through and still super relevant to today.
“Nature asked six prominent sci-fi writers — Lauren Beukes, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken Liu, Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds and Aliette de Bodard — to reflect on what the genre has to offer at the end of an extraordinary year.”
“Is science fiction relevant in an age of catastrophic climate change, the refugee crisis and the rise of the far right? Yes: not for what it predicts about the future of the world, but for how it unpacks who we are in it.”
“Science fiction allows us the distance to circumvent issue fatigue in our very troubled times. We can play out ideas and scenarios because we are creatures of parable and myth and allegory, TED talks and ethical trolley problems. Fiction is how we grapple with ourselves. By imagining the unimaginable, it’s possible to make reality more bearable.”
Image credit: Insanely awesome illustration from Señor Salme from Nature’s original article