I was asked this question a couple of weeks ago but due to traveling obligations and a busy schedule, I didn't respond quickly enough and the question disappeared from my dashboard. I'd like to post my response on my blog instead. It's a great question which I believe we all ask ourselves at different points in our lives. The question was "If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?"

Since I am a science fiction nut and grew up reading Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Delaney and Heinlein, my choice would be any of the faraway worlds that their wondrous stories took me. Samuel Delaney, in his "Babel -17" was one of those fictional worlds, where you met humans and aliens alike, working together to solve, an all-out galactic invasion. The book was written in 1966, and when the first Star Wars came out, I saw Delaney's vision in the bar scene straight away. He has a scene in Babel where the lead has to find a pilot, who ends up looking like a man-lion, to take her across the galaxy and she finds him in a bar full of pilots. Sound familiar?

I believe I'd like to find myself in that kind of fictional world, and I'd be a pilot, explorer and maybe even a philosopher type.

In these times of ours, I believe that is one of the principal reasons science fiction, super hero action themes and the like, are so popular. We're already at the dystopian future stage in human development with constant wars, societal breakdowns and massive inequalities in health, food and sanitation, not to mention wealth. Oh yeah, Delaney covered that in his seminal work; "The Two Towers".

I hope I answered the person's question, but for now, all I can do in this world is keep on speaking truth, stay above the noise and hope for a better world.