When I first learned that Joseph Conrad had been the author of a science fictional novel, I naturally fell upon it. On opening the book, and finding that the authorship was shared with Ford Maddox Hueffer (as he then was) my interest was magnified: the latter's gift for historical narrative had always intrigued me. Even so, until I started turning the pages, the book was still in my mind only ‘another SF novel’. Not till I had fully absorbed it did I realise its relationship to science fiction as an aid to learning: learning in the fullest possible sense.

Twenty years back, when working to get the Science Fiction Foundation off the ground, the enthusiastic co-operation I was able to get from Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Ken Bulmer and other leading authors was due to their interest in the total potential of this genre, one for which the ghastly locution ‘on-going’ can for once be evoked with some degree of accuracy. It has, under whatever name, been ‘on-going’ since the days of Plato, and, as long as there remain young people of whatever age, will continue to be so. I cannot recall a better explanation for this than one I heard given by Michael Moorcock at a party when asked by young fans, ‘What is the most important question in life?’ With barely a moment's hesitation he replied, ‘What to do next?’ Absolutely— and it is in science fiction only that this issue is seriously addressed.

This takes us at once to the vexed issue of whether the subject can be said to have genuine predictive value. I myself believe that it has, but this is an area so controversial that one can easily scorch one's fingers. I once asked Blish for an article on the subject for an anthology of mine. When it came, I found that it consisted mainly of failed predictions and predictions that should have been made, and were not … even so, it was noticeable that towards the end of his writing career he expressed increasingly Spenglerian views. And he was certainly not the only one.