The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

“What do you consider the raison d’être, the chief value, of science fiction?” The question was asked in a survey of s-f writers and editors in the fan magazine Double Bill last year.

Fred Saberhagen’s reply: “Ideally, science fiction gives a chance to impose different coordinate systems upon the human condition, and to try to see what will change and what will remain the same “

“Coordinate system” is engineerese for “background” or “measurement” or occasionally “viewpoint.” The different coordinate system, in a science-fiction story, may be an alien planet, an alien body, an alien culture (past, future, or sidewise-in-time).

In this case, the set of coordinate systems is a set of coordinate systems—which is neither a Steinism, nor a typographical error, but a description of a checker game.