[api]

Sci-fi is always about the future, or some possible future or alternate world, as imagined in the time it was written, and I think it has to be read that way. It's always about both the present (when it was written) and the future.

It's basically fantasy except the magic is, to varying degrees, rooted in real science and physics. There is of course the whole hard/soft sci-fi continuum that determines just how rooted it is, with soft sci-fi being pure fantasy with sci-fi veneer and hard sci-fi being fantasy that's physically plausible.

As actual science and technology advances and as society changes what we imagine will change. Sci-fi imagined today will either deal with AI and what AI is really shaping up to look like or it will imagine futures where AI has been abandoned for some reason (like Dune).

[operatingthetan]

>Sci-fi is always about the future, or some possible future or alternate world, as imagined in the time it was written, and I think it has to be read that way. It's always about both the present (when it was written) and the future.

In other words, it allows writers to talk about culture with a technological flair. It's still valuable later because it was really about the culture. The tech also enables wild scenarios, that often come true later on.

[chongli]

It's basically fantasy except the magic is, to varying degrees, rooted in real science and physics.

That's a superficial view of both Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Sure, there's a lot of schlock out there which essentially functions as this sort of meaningless escapism for the reader. But proper Sci-Fi and Fantasy is philosophical in a way that makes them radically different, if not diametrically opposed.

Fantasy stories typically depict a society in decay, with evil ascendant, and characters who yearn to return to a time of past innocence. It's ultimately backward looking and conservative. When it functions as social commentary, it's a critique of the alienation and impersonality of modernity.

Science Fiction is forward-looking. It asks "what if" questions about the limitations of our modern society by inviting us to view a society that has been freed from those limitations. It challenges our ideas about human nature. It's ultimately progressive, even when it depicts dystopian governments.