Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is. - Joanna Russ

I was constantly reading these stories about fucking in bars and fistfights and war, and my reaction, quite naturally, was that I didn't know anything about those things so I couldn't possibly write about them. And the stuff I could write about was considered trivial-writing about a fishing trip was considered "deep" and "raw," while a description of a high school dance was unimportant. There really was a profound bias about what was proper material for "Great Writing." So I decided to write about something nobody knew anything about-to transform the realism of my life into SF and fantasy. I was also drawn to the way SF writers' minds seemed to work. Current fiction bored me stiff, but not SF, where the conceivable was far larger than the personally observable. It's interesting to note that so-called mainstream fiction seems finally to be catching up to SF in this regard; it's becoming increasingly unrealistic, surrealistic, fantastic, “postrealistic.” I feel justified.

SF was born didactic! It originated as a teaching medium-which is why its potential to actually effect some changes in people's attitudes is infinitely greater. It's got representative protagonists, for example-at least it starts like this in the works of H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other proto-SF writers. If you look at, say, The War of the Worlds, the human beings there may represent certain attitudes or types, but they are obviously not "individuals" in the sense that characters in the great realistic novels are.

In the summer of 192- there occurred to me the most extraordinary event of my life. (beginning of "The Extraordinary Voyages of Amélie Bertrand")