Science fiction plays an important role. It can influence our thinking about the future and, because it is our thinking that will shape that future, it may even change it. Sometimes it serves as a warning, showing us what could happen if we lose control, fail to control, or try to control too much. Sometimes it is badly misunderstood. Sometimes it serves as an inspiration, painting utopias of techno-ubiquity, freedom from suffering, limitless energy and interstellar travel. Often, the SF author will take a relatively familiar idea and extrapolate it to an extreme, placing himself and his protagonists in a world that, while being alien to us, can be imagined if the author sees it clearly enough. And if we can think it, perhaps it could happen?

But SF is not about prediction, it is about ‘what if?’. Asking the ‘what if?’ question may reveal truths that accidentally coincide with future reality, but that is not SF’s purpose, its real purpose is to stretch possibilities to their breaking points. SF is the ultimate in curiosity. Yes, there are plenty of things to be curious about that don’t have to be imagined: cures to be found, depths to be explored, human psyches to be investigated and infinitesimal particles to ram into each other at near-lightspeed. But there is nothing as stimulating (to me at least) as the possibilities of what might happen - of what has not happened... yet.

I refuse to call this fantasy. I call this informed curiosity.