Ask HN:Why should I read science fiction? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN:Why should I read science fiction?

8 pointsekm29 comments

I read a lot:Good books as well as trash.However, the older I get the more I need to justify the content of my library.So,what would be a good reason to read(or continue reading) science fiction?

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Because it's fun. Seriously, if you don't like it, don't read it. If you do like it, that's all the justification you should need.

You don't need to justify your library to anyone but yourself.

Not every book needs to teach you some fundamental life lesson for it to be worth your time. Thinking like that is a quick and easy way to burning yourself out. Let your hair down and relax with it. Take it to bed with you and loose your imaginations. Have fun they way you want to.

Because you enjoy it.

I find the idea that you need some other "justification", or that some justification might lead you to continue to read science fiction when you don't enjoy it – to be a "wait, what?" kind of question.

"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."

― Bertrand Russell

If you don't enjoy science fiction then don't read it. If you are a looking for a reason to do so, then stop - it's wrong.

Science fiction allows you to view a situation without the biases of your upbringing, culture, or anecdotal experience. It can take a controversial scenario and place it in a foreign environment but still allow you to draw enough analogs to relate it back to the real scenario.

You should definitely read translated literature from foreign cultures.

Because Sci-Fiction throws a lot of insight into the future, into a life influenced by different dimensions, into a life with various social and economic alternatives. Over the years many innovations have been influenced by Sci-Fi novels. Incidents from books like 1984 have come totally true in various countries.

I think science fiction is not only fantasy plus science, I think, this type of books is an open door to the future, is the type of books that open your mind to think about the future. Also, when you read old science fiction books, you realize you are in the future, this is the future.

You can feel kinship with the writer. It can be like meeting and talking with some really smart and imaginative and funny person - the likes you might not have around where you are right now in your life.

From a productivity based perspective: The older you get the more it would seem to make sense to use the knowledge you have, rather than to invest heavily in acquiring new knowledge. So what you read would become less important.

As for why read sci-fi? Well, there's a lot of bad sci-fi out there. At its best it represents interesting explorations of the effects that changes in science, context, and or very other social structures can have when they interact with human societies - and in that much perhaps tells us something about ourselves and where we might be going. Accelerando probably falls into that category, Blindsight would be another, Dune.

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