Agreed. Fantasy and Scifi provide novel ways to explore the human condition, which is why Dune and Foundation and most of Le Guin are so attractive. I've always thought "The Left Hand of Darkness", a book about a human variant without permanent genders, was a truly marvelous work by Le Guin. And, of course, the entire Dune series is about human possibilites.
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/19/04 08:23AM >>> Eac> Personally, I find the "Dune" and "Foundation" series and "SiaSL" to be Eac> more politico-sociological than SciFi; they just happen to be set in Eac> the far future. In one book, Ursula Le Guin (who is just as sociological writer as Herbert) wrote something like /I am not writing about the future, I am writing about the people as they are now, extrapolated slightly/. I like books like these the best. Not just a technological showcase (which anyway is funny after 20 years as the author predicted it all wrong), but good literature. Best regards, Frantisek Vlcek
