There are way too many kinds of sci-fi to sum up the genre in one convenient statement like that. Some sci-fi seeks to lay off the most obvious and current con

There are way too many kinds of sci-fi to sum up the genre in one convenient statement like that. Some sci-fi seeks to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses to imagine other possibilities. Other sci-fi slightly exaggerates the flaws and assumptions of our world, and tries to logically extend them into a future in which they make even less sense, to demonstrate their absurdity. Still other sci-fi creates a world exactly like ours except with one significant technological advance, and tries to imagine where we'd go with that. Still other sci-fi takes what we know of how humans behave, puts them in completely unfamiliar settings, and uses those settings to explore the nature of people, rather than focusing on the technology. And some sci-fi, arguably the most fun, if not necessarily the most educational merely starts "Wouldn't it be cool/weird/fucked up if..." and just keeps going until it runs out of steam.