National Scifi Day is a celebration of all things science fiction on the birthday of Isaac Azimov, one of the Big Three of classic Hard Scifi. I have mixed feelings about those books*, but I grew up with a dad who loved them, and they've imprinted on my brain.
Scifi at it's best is forward-looking, trying to identify problems in the present and how to fix them or overcome them--hopefully before they get to the point where they're The Worst. We don't have to go through a dystopia or an apocalypse if the stories we tell do it first and tell us how to avoid their mistakes!
It's also a vital link in the science train--how many of today's scientists grew up watching Star Trek and reading Foundation and wanted to create the tech they saw there? I'm willing to bet a lot of them!
So today, read a scifi book, watch a scifi show (or a Syfy show, since they're actually producing good stuff these days and we need to let them know we like it!), play a scifi board game, argue the merits of one or another SF story with your friends--just geek out and remember why SF is the most mainstream speculative fiction!
What's your favorite science fiction story? Do you prefer reading scifi or watching it? What awesome scifi thing do you think people should pay more attention to, and what do you think is overrated? Tell us in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!
*I liked and devoured the collections of short stories when I was a kid--all the Azimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Brandury, and whoever else I could find on my dad's shelves. But the books were often dry and longwinded, and even as a kid I was like "why aren't there any girls in the future?" And that's why I loved Anne McCaffrey so much--girls doing things IN SPACE.
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