Science fiction’s power lies not in predicting the future or explaining science, but in using new metaphors drawn from our contemporary scientific understanding to explore truths about the human condition that can’t be expressed directly.
Ursula K. Le Guin on science_fiction and metaphor:
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
A metaphor for what?
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”
Frank Herbert on science_fiction:
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes prevent it.