How Would you Answer?

Has Science Fiction had an impact on your worldview? And if so how? Secondly is there one writer or novel in paticular that has "cranked" your head open?

OR:

What is the strangest thing you believe to be true?

Which question would you pick (and why) and what would your answer be?

I was invited to answer one of these for a sci fi blog group. It was nice to be picked.

I will add my answer when I have sent it to the blog group. Meanwhile... what about you?

My answer to the first question. (I really couldn't come up with anything concrete for the second one).

Yes, I would say science fiction has given my world view more options. Time travel, utopias, and end of the world scenarios (where people do survive) are my favourite science fiction stories to read or watch.

I see the world as separate from the planet. Our planet is a big ball of dust and gas in space but we are the little alien ants scattered all over it, clinging to the surface and mucking it all up. I don't see people as a good thing for the planet. If it had a choice it would likely find a scratching post and scrape us off. I don't see human beings as essential for the planet, we are a nuisance in reality.

Science fiction expands your mind with ideas and other realities. You begin to see past your little existence and need to survive. If you give that up for just a few minutes you get a whole new outlook, where we ourselves are just not that important. Science fiction is the best source of getting that kind of outlook.

Reading science fiction gets you to look at problems and decisions in alternate ways. Rather than seeing the simple and easy solutions you look for something a bit more out there, something less well known or popular and even take things in a totally new direction or turn them upside down. Just because it makes no sense, doesn't mean it won't work. I'm not saying everything should be taken that way. You don't need to cook purple spaghetti with goat innards but you might be open to trying spaghetti squash instead of the usual spaghetti noodles.

I like to read about someone's utopia, their planned out vision of the world and how it eventually crumbles because nothing (and no one) is really perfect, or complete in itself. Science fiction gives you so many points of view and a chance to take what you think is right and good and play with it till all the flaws (and the good points too) come out. You examine and explore far more than just taking an idea at face value.

I can't pinpoint any one writer or book. I've read so many and I've gotten so old that a lot of what I read has become part of the soup in my head. I take a bit of everything and use it to tinker with the masterplan of what I believe and what feels right to me. One writer that haunts my mind is Shirley Jackson but she's not a traditional science fiction writer.