I believe that the whole purpose of literature is to teach us something about life. Even when one writes a poem about a tree we would have no knowledge about that particular tree without the writer as a filter. Science fiction asks the questions about life not in the past or present, but in some sort of imagined future. When you read a book like Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and you are amazed to see that the hero is reading something as traditional as a book, how do you react? One could ask should there be a limit to fiction in science fiction? Or must every detail in the book be imagined? Can one imagine complete surroundings that will be alternative to one’s own? These are all perplexing question.
I believe that science fiction isn’t really about the future; it’s about some sort of extended future that is being created by the present. In order to ask philosophical questions about the future, one should start with a connection point to the present. If this connecting point between the future and present should be books then let it be books, if one has to remember one of Einstein’s theories in order for the reader to feel at home while one asks about the meaning of life, then so be it.
Sci-fi books that were published in the sixties bear the mark of the philosophical and moral question of that time. The ideas, for example, that humans are superior and there are second class robots are parallel to questions about colonialism and human rights. I don’t believe that those questions were ever solved. One can see that those books deal with morals because whenever a book begins with murder or death this is a signal that moral questions are about to be dealt, especially in the work of Asimov or Philip K. Dick.
I love the way pseudo-science (invented theories by fictional scientists) is being poured into Solaris and this is something that should be learned by those who wish to put philosophy as the queen of their book. One must remember that she is but a slave of the plot. In the following article I shall try to show another aspect of creating an imaginary universe.