Isaac Asimov on Science Fiction

Isaac Asimov, perhaps the most famous science fiction writer of all time thanks to the popularity of his Foundation and Empire books, was also a prolific science writer. Indeed, his goal was to become the best science popularizer of all time.

A few of his essays dealt with science fiction, and many of these were collected into an anthology called Asimov on Science Fiction, published way back in 1983.

In one of them, he gives a brief summary of man's dreams of space travel, as related by authors from the dawn of recorded time:

1st century AD - Lucian of Samosata tells of a journey to the Moon, using a flock of birds
1657 - Cyrano de Bergerac writes a story in which he suggests rockets as a way to reach the moon.
1752 - Micromégas is a short story written by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius and his companion from the planet Saturn. (They observe Earth and laugh at its follies)
1818 - The first novel that might be defined as science fiction is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818)
1863 - Jules Verne becomes the first writer to specialize in what will become known as science fiction, with his 1863 publication of Five Weeks in a Balloon
1895 - HG Wells' The Time Machine, the very first true time travel story, is published
1898 - HG Wells' The War of the Worlds, the first interplanetary warfare story, is published
1902 - Frenchman Georges Melies films The Man in the Moon
1920 - RUR, a play involving androids supplanting man, was first performed
1926 - Hugo Gernsback publishes Amazing Stories, the first magazine to be drevoted exclusivey to science fiction.
1929 - Frau im Mond, by Fritz Lang, is one of the first "serious" science fiction movies, featuring a relatively accurate - based on science known then - journey to the moon, such as the use of a multi-stage rocket.

And here's an important paragraph that we all need to grasp:

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be--and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not, or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today--but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept about which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Another use of science fiction?

It stimulates curiosity and the desire to know.