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Aided and abetted by the erks, "America was alive and well on World, and growing." |
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Thomas Clareson, Frederik Pohl (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1987), pp. 143, 14748 |
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If we supposeas I think most of us dothat science fiction is something more than mere escapist entertainment, it is because we believe that at its best science fiction gives its readers some new and otherwise unobtainable insights into our worldin fact, into all our possible worlds. I do believe that. I think that through science fiction we can see, for instance, how many of the customs and "truths" we live by are logically inevitable, and thus "right," and how many are mere accidents of decisions taken, or even of our mammalian biology and the physical constraints of the particular planet on which we happened to evolve. Science fiction is the only literature we have that can give us this objective perspective on our human affairswhat Harlow Shapley once, in a considerably different context, called "The View from a Distant Star." |
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When science fiction writers explore the implications of what that God's-eye view of our world reveals, they enter many touchy areas. That can't be avoided. Most writers don't even try to avoid it, and this is true not only of those writers who set out to explore large questions but even of the authors of the space operas and the pulpy adventure stories of the 1920s and 1930s. (. . .) |
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It is fair to ask if the political aspects of all this political science fiction are deliberately inserted by the author. Fair to ask, but hard to answer, for attempting to untangle an author's purposes is one of the high-risk activities of literary criticism. |
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However, there is one author whose intentions I do know something aboutmuch of the time, anywayand that is myself. Many of my own works, including some of the ones I like best, are overtly political, even propagandistic in their central themes. The Years of the City is an explicit attempt to describe the stages of political evolution in America over the next century or two; the starting assumptions of Jem deal with what I imagined to be the future of international politics after the Cold War had run its course. |
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