On Monday, October 14, 2014, author Neil Gaiman delivered a lecture at the Barbican in London, for the Reading Agency. Launched in 2012, the Reading Agency's annual lecture series is a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share original, challenging ideas about reading and libraries.
Gaiman's lecture explains why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all, and not just for the literate. He recounts an anecdote that cites reading science fiction as a distinct advantage. Though traditionally disparaged as escapist, science fiction does fuel the reader's imagination, inspiring many to imagine, invent, and create the worlds of their temporary escape.
I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?
It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.
If science fiction author William Gibson had not published his seminal novel Neuromancer, influencing many readers to become scientists, programmers, et al, would the world today exist as it does? There is a definite connection between being able to read and realising the world of one's dreams. More »
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