by Michael Greaney

Created on: March 04, 2009

At one time, all a book needed to entice me to buy it was the label "science fiction." As I grew in wisdom (or at least became more budget conscious) I was forced to become more discriminating; rocket ships and zap guns were no longer sufficient to feed my addiction. I required more substantial fodder.

Unfortunately, as I grew older, I also not only grew wiser (budget conscious), but actually began to learn a few facts. I began to understand why some critics looked down on science fiction as adolescent wish fulfillment and escapism. I found that many of the new offerings (and quite a few of the old ones as well) began to bore me. I kept reading, but at a much lower rate of consumption, and my dissatisfaction continued to increase.

It was some time before I began to understand why I was dissatisfied with much science fiction and its partner in crime, fantasy. It had to do with the fact that, much to my surprise, I had become an expert in certain fields, notably money, credit, and banking, to say nothing of the natural law and at the same time acquired an adequate, if not too deep, knowledge of basic physics. This leads to my personal list of the "Top Ten Things Science Fiction Has Gotten Wrong." These are not predictions that went astray (that's just a timing error, not anything significant), but areas in which science fiction has presented as fact something that can't possibly be true, not even given the willing suspension of disbelief that the typical reader brings to any work of fiction.

1. Inadequate or total lack of understanding of what a "human being" is. Face it - unless you know yourself, you can't write believably about alien species, or even presumably human events. Nevertheless, I have found that remarkably few science fiction writers seem to grasp what a human being is. And that is? Human beings are creatures that, as part of their nature, acquire and develop virtue, that is, consciously strive for the good. Someone may have a distorted vision of what constitutes "good," but strives for it because he or she believes it to be good. Yet how many science fiction villains, from Ming the Merciless to Darth Vader, behave as if they gloried in doing evil for the sake of evil? Come on ... even Hitler thought he was doing good, as any reader of Mein Kampf can tell you.

2. Lack of understanding of essential human nature. How many science fiction classics have you read (and how many contemporary copycats) that posit a basic change in human nature to support the

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