The opposite of liberal is stingy. The opposite of radical is superficial. The opposite of conservative is destructive. So I declare that I am a radi… - R. A. Lafferty

Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future or far-future destructions and its mind-set will not allow it to realize that the destruction of our world has already happened in the quite recent past, that today is "The Day After The World Ended". … I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as "Western Civilization" or "Modern Civilization", happened suddenly, some time in the half century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was "The World" for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all "ends of worlds". Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things. It can't be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went...

But time heals all wounds. That is a proverb, an untrue proverb. There wounds unhealed by time enough to fill every lazare from the beginning. All time can do is to give a little time, to achieve composure, to make a mask. You build it out of textured wax, and if you are skilful it looks just like your face, just like your face will look ten years from now. But it doesn’t fit right. You never saw one that fit right.

But the world goes on. That’s another thing that people say. It doesn’t. It jolts a little bit and bumps; and then it comes to a stop. The scenery unrolls backwards and gives the impression that the world goes on. Bit it does not go.

Hold! Go no further!” upset people cry out. “You are coming too near to the subject named ‘religion’!”
Yes, ‘Religion’ is one of the taboo words that modern science fictioneers may not think nor say, unless they use it to mean something else. The selective speculation which they are allowed will not stretch far enough to allow religion itself, not far enough to see that we have passed the Isthmus and have only to take off our handcuffs and blindfolds to be free. In this, the narrowness, Science Fiction stands where much science stood a hundred years ago and where almost all pseudo-science still stands today.