Kindle Notes & Highlights
fantasy and science fiction have long been literatures of revolution—most effectively because casual or unanalytical readers fail to recognize them as such. And as Le Guin noted, most readers presume that one of these genres (and only one) is future-oriented. They aggrandize the predictive nature of science fiction while dismissing fantasy as regressive, when in fact both genres are actually about the present: science fiction through allegory, and fantasy by concatenation
The most revolutionary changes in our world have rarely been imposed quickly or violently, after all, and the gun has not been the primary instrument of lasting change. Ideas are far more dangerous to the status quo, over the long term.
So the shadowy cabal is completely right: fantasy and science fiction are the means through which we ponder the slow ongoing revolutions of the present and foreshadow—or incite—the next revolutions to come.
