Post #883993 · Elektrine

2026-03-09 04:26 UTC

A line in a mostly unrelated post by a friend got me thinking about a maxim I&#39;ve heard a lot lately: &quot;#Sciencefiction is not about predicting the #future, but rather commenting on the present.&quot; It&#39;s become conventional wisdom rapidly approaching the status of a thought-terminating cliche. When I sit down to write #SF, &quot;what if&quot; is my primary motivation. The here-and-now obviously shapes my thoughts, but I&#39;m not *deliberately* writing about it—if I wanted to do that, I&#39;d pick a different genre. Maybe I&#39;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&#39;m just really bad at getting the point!

Replies (4)

@lispi314@udongein.xyz 2026-03-09 07:10

@medigoth It's one thing one can deliberately do with Sci-Fi. Particularly as satire. That's hardly the only thing one can do with Sci-Fi though.

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@medigoth@qoto.org 2026-03-09 04:30

Of course, “really bad at getting the point” is always a possibility. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t think of that.

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@kcarr2015@mstdn.social 2026-03-09 04:37

@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. 🤷‍♂️

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@falcennial@mastodon.social 2026-03-09 05:09

@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.

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