Since I am creating a new and more focused blog, I wanted to add one of my posts from my old site. This is the basis of why I write and how important science fiction and fantasy are to me! Link to original post
I have been asked "What is the point of [science fiction]?" and I had never really been able to explain it until now (and even now it is beyond words).
The reason people who read science fiction and fantasy cannot explain how important they are is because the message of truth within the facade of lies and exaggerations is hidden within the face-value of the words written. When we read a good novel and become so absorbed in it that we begin to feel like a part of the story and it becomes almost tangible and the "real" world around us begins to disappear, it is because we are in a state of hypnosis. So we are so absorbed in this world that we are learning lessons and making decisions from made-up characters' points of view. Now when we close the book the state of hypnosis ends and yet-it doesn't.
We talk about our Hogwarts houses to our friends and find a sense of belonging within something completely imaginary, we speak of our factions and districts as if we were part of those imaginary worlds. The Hunger Games series has been quoted and symbolized in protests, football games, and as part of political responses... If fiction has no place in the world, then why does it have a place in the world?
H. G. Wells wrote about the atom bomb before it existed, the word "robot" was first used in a science fiction novel, and the computer virus was written about long before it came into existence. Do not tell me that science fiction has no purpose except to escape the real world-no! Science fiction has been inspiring us for decades. Science fiction is real. Science fiction describes the realities around us. We (science fiction/fantasy authors) take the "what if's" and the "let's say's" in the world and turn them into "thought experiments" as Ursula K. Le Guin put it in her Introduction to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness.
The words we write are the spinning colorful designs you see before the hypnotist can work his "magic" on the crowd in order to get into your subconscious mind-and as the number one rule of hypnosis goes: "You cannot be made to do what you do not want to do.". When reading a successful novel, you can only come out changed if you allow it to be that way, so artists are not deceiving you; we're teaching lessons that can only be learned on a deeper and almost inexplicable level.
Don't let these impacts go to waste... Authors write to inspire action. Think about what these books are truly saying about the state of the current world. Read, young ones, read! And change the world.
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Cat
