Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.

Ursula K Le Guin introducing Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic-quote Le Guin Strugatsky Roadside Picnic science fiction imaginative subversion any status quo

Consider also:

  1. “These reactionaries preserved their moral purity (as reactionaries so often do) by not reading, so they didn’t have to see that Soviet writers had been using science fiction for years to write with at least relative freedom from Party ideology about politics, society, and the future of mankind. “
  2. “Run the country by doing what’s expected. Win the war by doing the unexpected. Control the world by doing nothing.”
  3. “Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief. For the world is a sacred object. Nothing is to be done to it. To do anything to it is to damage it. To seize it is to lose it.”