Since starting this class, my android has been suggesting sf-related articles to me. This one by Gavin Miller of University of Glasgow popped up this week.¹ The article challenges the long time classification of sf as merely escape fiction and not literary in nature.

The article begins by quoting Ian McEwan, author of Machines Like Me,  who claims that the novel, about advanced AI, is not science fiction because it deals “not in terms of traveling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas.”² This quote has been cited all over the internet, mainly to point out the ways in which the literary world is ignorant and dismissive of the world sf.

I don’t know to what extent Ian McEwan really meant to put down sf as a genre, but regardless it provides an opportunity to reiterate how much good sf does focus on human dilemmas. This is why I titled my website “The Human Adventure;” it is through these fictional stories that we discover real things about the human condition, both through moral thought experiments and through the cognitive estrangement of our own societies.

The article ends with the claim: “Rather than ask us to pull on our anti-gravity boots, open the escape hatch and leap into fantasy, science fiction typically aspires to be a literature that faces up to social reality.”

1. Miller, Gavin. “Fan of Sci-Fi? Psychologists Have You in Their Sights.” The Conversation, 18 Feb. 2020, theconversation.com/fan-of-sci-fi-psychologists-have-you-in-their-sights-131342.

2. Adams, Tim. “Ian McEwan: ‘Who’s Going to Write the Algorithm for the Little White Lie?’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 Apr. 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/14/ian-mcewan-interview-machines-like-me-artificial-intelligence.