"SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions"
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Science fiction’s dirty secret is that it’s often built from the same prefab parts as everything else: chosen ones, evil empires, tech-as-magic. John Sladek, a writer famous for skewering lazy genre habits, is staking out an ideal rather than flattering the aisle. “SF has at least the advantage” lands like a backhanded compliment. At least. The phrase implies a low bar: whatever else science fiction gets wrong, it can still claim one crucial edge over realist storytelling and received “serious” literature.
The key word is “preconceptions.” Sladek isn’t talking about trivia-level expectations (spaceships, aliens) so much as the invisible assumptions that reality fiction smuggles in: that society’s basic operating system is fixed; that human nature has a default setting; that the present is normal and inevitable. SF, at its best, doesn’t just invent gadgets. It performs a controlled demolition of common sense. By changing the rules - economics, biology, time, gender, language - it forces readers to encounter their own biases as contingent, not natural.
There’s also a sly challenge embedded here: SF only has this advantage if it actually uses it. The genre can liberate the imagination, or it can become its own prison of tropes. Sladek, coming out of the New Wave era’s skepticism and formal play, is pointing to SF’s real job: not prediction, but estrangement. Make the familiar strange, and you finally see what you’d stopped noticing.
The key word is “preconceptions.” Sladek isn’t talking about trivia-level expectations (spaceships, aliens) so much as the invisible assumptions that reality fiction smuggles in: that society’s basic operating system is fixed; that human nature has a default setting; that the present is normal and inevitable. SF, at its best, doesn’t just invent gadgets. It performs a controlled demolition of common sense. By changing the rules - economics, biology, time, gender, language - it forces readers to encounter their own biases as contingent, not natural.
There’s also a sly challenge embedded here: SF only has this advantage if it actually uses it. The genre can liberate the imagination, or it can become its own prison of tropes. Sladek, coming out of the New Wave era’s skepticism and formal play, is pointing to SF’s real job: not prediction, but estrangement. Make the familiar strange, and you finally see what you’d stopped noticing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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