Some time ago I mentioned the role of SF in having a vision, how our culture’s attitude made “visionary” SF harder, and the virtue of incrementalization. Serdar further examined how we might examine progress inappropriate.
But something kept kicking around in my head. There is some good SF out there, challenging SF, outrageous SF out there. But I didn’t see anything that was really inspiring to me, that felt like it’d build the future. Certainly little of it inspires me (especially as you’ve heard talking to me about my editing experience).
Then I realized that if we’re looking to SF to provide visions and growth and direction, to inspire us to more, it doesn’t matter if the SF is good (in some ways), challenging, or outrageous.
The thing is we need SF that really inspires us to do more. That means it has to have two traits.