The first science fiction novel I remember reading was by Robert Heinlein. It happened to be his first novel, entitled Rocket Ship Galileo. Published originally in 1947, it told the story of a nuclear scientist and some boys who built a rocket, then flew it to the moon where they had to fight against some Nazis. Just the sort of story that would capture the imagination and heart of a third grade boy.

After that, I sought out other books that were, as I called them, “space stories.” My elementary school in Westerville Ohio was rather small. Even remembering it through the eyes of an 8 year old, the library still seems inadequate: little more than a narrow closet packed with dusty volumes. Therefore, I soon exhausted the available stories. But, there was still the local public library, and I quickly located their collection of science fiction. I began with children’s books, of course, but it wasn’t long before, with my mom’s help, I was able to move on to the grown up books.

Over the years, my tastes in science fiction broadened. I discovered that there was much more to science fiction than just space opera.

For the uninitiated, their idea of science fiction might be limited to the bad movies that Hollywood has manufactured. Likewise, a lot of the science fiction books out there are admittedly not really very good. But, as Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, once said, 90 per cent of everything is junk.

The remaining ten percent of science fiction has nothing to be ashamed of. A good science fiction story, like all great literature, deals with issues beyond its setting in space, beyond all the fancy gadgetry. In fact, the gee-whiz is mere decoration for the basic human problems that are discussed, ranging from questions of whether life has meaning, to the nature of reality, human relations, and questions of love and war. Coming of age stories, romance, heartbreak and struggle all appear within its pages. But beyond that, the stories can ask questions that no other literature will touch: the implications both philosophical and theological of progress, linked to warnings about the boxes opened by technological Pandoras.

Interesting sub-genres have formed. One of my favorites is most commonly known as “alternate history.” It is a mental experiment: one looks at a turning point in history and contemplates what might have happened had things turned out a different way. For instance, a British soldier had George Washington in his rifle sight and chose not to pull the trigger. What if he had? Or what of the lost battle plans belonging to Robert E. Lee that in the real world were recovered by a northern soldier, thereby contributing to Lee’s loss of an important battle. What if the plans had not been lost?

What if the Spanish Armada had not been wiped out by a storm and instead had successfully conquered England just before the time of Shakespeare?

Harry Turtledove, trained as a historian, is a science fiction author who has contemplated many of these questions and has written detailed novels following up how the world might have turned out differently—focusing often times on how the lives of people we know from history could have been transformed, as in his novel Ruled Britannia, where Shakespeare writes subversive plays against the Spanish overlords and plots rebellion.

What if’s can sometimes be remarkably improbable, and still raise interesting questions worth exploring. Eric Flint has written a series of novels, beginning with one entitled 1632 (and currently available for free on Amazon for the Kindle or Kindle app), in which he assumes a West Virginia mining town from the year 2000 is suddenly and unexpectedly transported whole into Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War. His focus is on the effect of modern ideas on seventeenth century Europe, rather than on the consequences of unexpected modern technology. So he plays with how American ideas of freedom of speech and religion, democracy, and limited government interact and alter the balance of power in old Europe. He imagines the discussions a post-Vatican II Catholic priest might have with a seventeenth century Pope. And what about our modern concepts of hygiene and disease? Or how do the kings and other tyrants of the seventeenth century react to reading about their lives in twenty-first century textbooks?

John Scalzi wrote a book a couple years ago called Old Man’s War in which he considers an odd question. What if a technology developed that could make people young again after they had gotten old—but it was only given to those who, on their 75th birthday, agreed to sign up to become soldiers fighting an interplanetary war?

Sarah A. Hoyt has written a series of books beginning with Darkship Thieves. The main character, Athena Hera Sinistra wakes up in the middle of the night in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. From there, she fights for freedom and for explanations; she winds up learning many dark secrets about her father, herself, and the world she thought she knew.

If you haven’t read any science fiction lately, or perhaps never at all, you might want to give it a try. You may be surprised by where it will lead you.

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