A line in a mostly unrelated post by a friend got me thinking about a maxim I've heard a lot lately: "#Sciencefiction is not about predicting the #future, but rather commenting on the present." It's become conventional wisdom rapidly approaching the status of a thought-terminating cliche.
When I sit down to write #SF, "what if" is my primary motivation. The here-and-now obviously shapes my thoughts, but I'm not *deliberately* writing about it—if I wanted to do that, I'd pick a different genre.
Maybe I'm not exactly trying to predict the future, but I am trying to make believable predictions about what *could* happen if such-and-such occurred. And I think most of the SF authors whose work I admire would agree with me, unless I'm just really bad at getting the point!
@medigoth
Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought most fiction was a commentary on the present. Even the few bits of hard science fiction I've read feel like a commentary on the present, just cuz they describe where we're going. 🤷♂️
@kcarr2015 Extrapolation from present circumstances isn't exactly "commentary on the present" the way it's usually meant, though. IMO, YMMV.
@medigoth absolutely, well put.
what if is a great starting point for speculative fiction, of which science fiction I offers unlimited potential.
social commentary is another great starting point.
or maybe the starting itself is the point. there is a reason it feels so exciting.
@falcennial Yeah, to me the starting is a lot more interesting than the commenting, most of the time. I don't object to commentary when it's done well. But I do object to the idea that it's what all or even most SF is about.
That's hardly the only thing one can do with Sci-Fi though.
Of course, “really bad at getting the point” is always a possibility. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t think of that.