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Good sci-fi is good philosophy. A good companion to sci-fi is history. When people nay-say because we have no proof and 'given what we know today' I am reminded

Good sci-fi is good philosophy. A good companion to sci-fi is history. When people nay-say because we have no proof and 'given what we know today' I am reminded that most people didn't have electricity 150 years ago. The combustion engine is being superseded only 100 years after it became commonplace. Hell, 50-80 years ago half of England didn't have an indoors toilet and plumbing. What was the population of the US's tech-central, California, in 1850? The region was hardly populated. The last 500 years, and especially in the 20th century we have moved at an astounding rate, both technologically and socially. I have sci-fi books on my shelf from 40 years ago in which the population of Earth reaches 'critical' proportions at 5 billion. Nay-sayers at the time would never have accepted that we would reach over 7bn in 2016. Some HNers in the comments here clearly don't realize that a great many sci-fi writers have been scientists and cosmologists, professional and amateur, but dedicated to the science of the genre, and from there they take their starting point.

DonHopkins 9y ago
Lem didn't have a very positive opinion about most sci-fi writers, except for one in particular: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm But that one particular sci-fi writer had some harsh things to say about Lem to the FBI, and Lem's criticism got him kicked out of SFWA: http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick "[...] What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. [...]" -PKD to FBI Why was Stanislaw Lem expelled from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) in 1976? The following quote from J. Madison Davis' book on Stanislaw Lem gives an answer to your question: Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms. (...) Those opinions provoked an unpleasant debate in the SFWA [the "Lem affair"]. Philip José Farmer and others were incensed by Lem's comments (...) and eventually brought about the removal of the honorary membership(...). Other members, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, then protested the removal (...) and the SFWA then offered Lem a regular membership, which he, of course, refused in 1976. Asked later about the "affair," he remarked, that his opinions of the state of science fiction were already known when he was offered an honorary membership (...). He also added he harboured no ill feelings towards the SFWA or U.S. writers in particular, "...but it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers".

DonHopkins 9y ago

Lem didn't have a very positive opinion about most sci-fi writers, except for one in particular: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm But that one particular sci-fi writer had some harsh things to say about Lem to the FBI, and Lem's criticism got him kicked out of SFWA: http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick "[...] What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. [...]" -PKD to FBI Why was Stanislaw Lem expelled from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) in 1976? The following quote from J. Madison Davis' book on Stanislaw Lem gives an answer to your question: Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms. (...) Those opinions provoked an unpleasant debate in the SFWA [the "Lem affair"]. Philip José Farmer and others were incensed by Lem's comments (...) and eventually brought about the removal of the honorary membership(...). Other members, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, then protested the removal (...) and the SFWA then offered Lem a regular membership, which he, of course, refused in 1976. Asked later about the "affair," he remarked, that his opinions of the state of science fiction were already known when he was offered an honorary membership (...). He also added he harboured no ill feelings towards the SFWA or U.S. writers in particular, "...but it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers".