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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 2751829" data-attributes="member: 177">While perhaps true, that wasn't the point I was trying to make at all.&nbsp; Science fiction has a strong &quot;morality play&quot; tradition, of telling stories in which the statement the story makes is more important than the immersive qualities of the fiction.The Original Series episode, &quot;Let That Be Your Last Battlefield&quot; stands as a good example.&nbsp; This is where we see a conflict between Bele and Lokai, the &quot;half-white/half-black&quot; humanoids playing out a racial struggle so powerful that it destroyed their homeworld.&nbsp; In this episode, the important point is not the story, or the characterization.&nbsp; It's the simple statement that racism is stupid.&nbsp; Much of H.G. Wells' work also fits this mold - The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and War of the Worlds are all strong &quot;statement&quot; stories, and any number of short stories by Larry Niven (and many other &quot;hard&quot; SF authors) are more about displaying a particular point of science than they are about characters or plot.&nbsp; In these works, the point of the writing is to make you think about how people work, how the universe works and where we fit in it, or where we may go in the future, or what our current behaviors mean.&nbsp; This is part of where the term &quot;speculative fiction&quot; comes from - the story is as much or more about speculation than storytelling.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 2751829, member: 177"] While perhaps true, that wasn't the point I was trying to make at all. Science fiction has a strong "morality play" tradition, of telling stories in which the statement the story makes is more important than the immersive qualities of the fiction. The Original Series episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" stands as a good example. This is where we see a conflict between Bele and Lokai, the "half-white/half-black" humanoids playing out a racial struggle so powerful that it destroyed their homeworld. In this episode, the important point is not the story, or the characterization. It's the simple statement that racism is stupid. Much of H.G. Wells' work also fits this mold - [i]The Time Machine[/i], [i]The Island of Dr. Moreau[/i], and [i]War of the Worlds[/i] are all strong "statement" stories, and any number of short stories by Larry Niven (and many other "hard" SF authors) are more about displaying a particular point of science than they are about characters or plot. In these works, the point of the writing is to make you think about how people work, how the universe works and where we fit in it, or where we may go in the future, or what our current behaviors mean. This is part of where the term "speculative fiction" comes from - the story is as much or more about speculation than storytelling. [/QUOTE]

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