>Fiction isn't a waste of time, but you can't say it is intellectually interesting compared to science. I am of the camp that real physics is far more interest

>Fiction isn't a waste of time, but you can't say it is intellectually interesting compared to science. I am of the camp that real physics is far more interesting than fiction to me personally, and I crack open textbooks far more often than works of fiction. However, I must opine that to say that fiction isn't as intellectually interesting compared to science probably speaks more to your own lack of understanding of the subject of fiction than to fiction itself. Fiction is far from a settled science! There is tremendous room for creativity. Many competing mental models for how to compose a story, character, the prose itself, how literary themes should interact, etc. etc. What makes a best-seller different from a mediocre book? An endless number of things that can be dissected, experimented with and evolved. And that's to say nothing about the concepts that can be toyed with through fiction and stories. Setting up a fictitious universe and exploring the consequences of that setup is not so different from asking the 'what if' questions assuming certain mathematical axioms or different sets of physical laws and symmetries.