During a recent, otherwise delightful visit to the historic Heywood Hill bookshop in Mayfair, Her Majesty, Queen Camilla made a confession that sent a collective shudder through a particular section of the literary cosmos. When asked during a reading consultation if there were any genres she simply could not abide, the Queen replied without a moment's hesitation: “I hate sci-fi”. Pronouncing it with an endearing yet dismissive “sky-fi,” she laughed and doubled down: “No science fiction. No, I can't do that… that really is one I don't love”.
It is, of course, the absolute prerogative of anyone, royal or otherwise, to have personal preferences but to write off the entire apparatus of science fiction as a cold, unlovable monolith is, to my mind, to dismiss the very mechanisms that make literature so vital to the human condition.
I will be charitable and condition my reaction by first stating the obvious. Science Fiction covers a wide swathe of sub-categories and the term sci-fi could, to the uninitiated mean merely a collection of stories about metallic starships, laser pistols, and green men invading from the red sands of Mars. But it is so much more.
At its core, science fiction is the most profoundly philosophical, deeply empathetic, and radically human genre available to the modern reader. Far from being an escape from reality, it is a mirror held up to our own world. A mirror that distorts the present such that a new perspective can be gained on humans and humanity. And as a window into the future, it is not just entertaining, it can also be a valuable, and at times a cautionary tale.
The most common misconception about science fiction is that it is obsessed with technology at the expense of humanity. Critics can paint it as a dry exercise in physics or a Boy’s Own adventure narrative. However, the greatest science fiction works use the extraordinary as a laboratory to take the measure of the ordinary.
Take Isaac Asimov’s I Robot. The overarching brilliance of I, Robot lies in the invention of the Three Laws of Robotics which act as a brilliant narrative engine, transforming what could have been dry sci-fi adventures into intricate logic puzzles. In Runaround (The Paradigm Shift) for example, a robot is caught in an existential loop because a danger to its existence (violating the Third Law) perfectly balances out a vaguely worded order to fetch resources (violating the Second Law). By treating morality and ethics as code to be debugged, Asimov created a subgenre of intellectual detective stories that forced readers to look at human logic from the outside.
When science fiction removes us from our familiar surroundings, it strips away the cultural baggage that blinds us to our own flaws. By placing human beings, or characters possessing human hearts, in unfamiliar, alien terrains, the genre isolates our core traits such as empathy, morality, resilience. It begs questions: How do we treat "Others" when they look entirely different from us? How do we hold onto our values when our society has utterly collapsed? What remains of the human spirit when it is pushed to the cold, unforgiving edge of the universe?
It is somewhat ironic that a British monarch should dismiss futuristic fiction so readily, given that the United Kingdom is practically the cradle of the genre. The British literary canon is utterly gilded with futuristic masterpieces that have shaped the global consciousness. H.G. Wells and The Time Machine that leads the reader to question class warfare and inequality, George Orwell’s totalitarian 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (both novels from which I draw inspiration in my upcoming novel, 2173), Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and its exploration of gender dynamics and politics.
Surely, loathing science fiction is akin to appreciating the trunk of a spreading oak tree while ignoring its furthest, most adventurous, daring branches. When George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was not writing a whimsical fantasy about the future; he was writing a terrifyingly urgent critique of post-WWII political trends with relevance today (check out American politics as a terrifying example of what can be done in even the ‘shining light on the hill’). Or Ursula K. Le Guin’s journey to the icy planet of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness to examine how a society might function without the rigid, often destructive binaries of gender.
These are not trivial stories about "sky-fi." These are heavyweight, high-stakes, mind-expanding literary examinations of the world we inhabit.
In her reading consultation, the Queen expressed a deep love for stories that are anchored in the human experience, such as the grand historical sweep of Alexandre Dumas. Yet, science fiction is uniquely equipped to do this and more. It expands the boundaries of that very empathy. It asks the reader to engage in a profound leap of the imagination.
When we read a contemporary novel set in a London drawing room or a New York apartment or when we read historical fiction, our empathy is guided by familiarity. We recognize the social cues, the institutions, the class structures, and the historical context. But when reading science fiction we are forced to confront challenges to our societal understandings and examine our views, our norms, even our morality. All precisely because of the mechanics of science fiction.
Perhaps the Queen feels that we live in an era that feels increasingly like a science fiction novel unfolding in real-time because, from the rapid, dizzying ascent of artificial intelligence to the ethical minefields of gene editing, neural chips, the climate crisis, and commercial space travel, the boundaries between what is real and what was once deemed ‘impossible’ are eroding by the hour.
I accept that this ‘chaos’ can be unnerving. But think on this: science fiction is the only genre that actively prepares the human psyche for this future shock. In fact, I think it’s not going too far to say that science fiction acts as an early warning system. Before submarines wreaked havoc in WWII, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea was mapping the future. Long before the first smartphone was built, science fiction writers were debating the psychological impact of being hyper-connected - yet fundamentally isolated. Decades before the first algorithm began predicting and shaping our desires, Philip K. Dick was writing about the erosion of privacy and the engineering of the human mind.
By rejecting the genre, a reader risks shutting their eyes to the very vocabulary required to understand the modern world. Science fiction provides the myths, the metaphors, and the cautionary tales that should allow us to navigate our rapidly accelerating technological landscape. All without losing our moral compass.
It is entirely possible that Her Majesty’s aversion to the genre stems from exposure to its loudest, most commercialized iterations. We are enveloped by the explosive, special effects that often prioritizes spectacle over substance on our screens. But the literary world of science fiction is so much more than this; vast, nuanced, and - yes - deeply poetic.
Long Live the Imagination
To rule out science fiction is to draw a border around the human imagination and declare everything beyond it hostile, forbidden territory. Yet, the history of human progress has always belonged to the dreamers, the adventurers, and those who dared to ask, "What if?"
Ray Bradbury wrote: "Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself... Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody...". I would add that it is also a window into what could happen if we are not on guard and what might be achievable if we reach for the stars.
Science fiction takes the crown jewels of human intelligence - our ability to reason, to invent, and to look forward - and pairs it with the essence of humanity. It is a genre that refuses to be earthbound, demanding that we look up at the stars not just to admire their beauty, but to see our own reflections staring back at us.
Perhaps, with the right book in hand, even a Queen might find that the vast, uncharted territories of "sky-fi" are not so cold and unlovable after all. They are merely home to a different kind of truth and a path to exploring oneself.