Albert Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Reading creative stories is like opening a portal to the imagination. People severely underestimate the influence of science fiction novels. For instance, you can see the huge influence the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov has had on Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who devoted most of his time to building sophisticated and cutting-edge companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Writing and language are tools that can be used to translate our thoughts, theories, or imagination onto paper. Science fiction allows us to open ourselves up to new otherworldly possibilities.
A great feature of these famous science fiction writers is that they have a background in science, thus proving that they are multidisciplinary and exercising their creative writing skills which is in turn exercising their imagination. For example, the father of science fiction novels H. G. Wells, who predicted the atomic bomb, among other things, received a degree in Zoology and was well enshrined in the study of Biology and Darwinism. He became a science teacher, then finally a successful writer. Wells has been writing novels since the age of fourteen, so one can say he was headed towards his calling either way by combining the two things he loved most, science and writing.
Another fascinating science fiction writer was Philip K. Dick. His novels were adapted into films such as BladeRunner, Minority Report, and Total Recall. There was one key defining day that changed his life. That event seems totally far-fetched. You would think he was crazy, or maybe he has taken some kind of drugs because of how unbelievable it is. It doesn’t help that he did have mental and drug issues unlike his contemporaries Wells and Asimov. He said, “I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane.” Was Philip K. Dick a Madman or a Mystic? is an article that recaps a book called, The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick.
Writers play a crucial role in shaping our thoughts and society. You do not know where or when you may receive a divine fury. You may get a spring of inspiration from a dream, song, poem, painting, event, or any number of things. They say that the opposite of nature is culture, and in my field of study, there is a great emphasis centered on culture. But I do not discount nature at all. I believe social science and natural science can coexist to the same degree Auguste Comte believed sociology can be used to unite all of the sciences to improve society. Nevertheless, you can’t go wrong by reading the works of these three science fiction writers.
Social Scholarly 