Always a little sceptical of science fic-tion, I would read time travel as a trip up-down memory lane and two-headed green creatures as projections of our own distrust of our diabolic selves, threatening our own planet with fire-balling shotguns, burning beautiful bridges down to dystopian dust. With the surge of TV series on Netflix speculating the futures, suspecting us to be the strangers our parents warned us about, showing us a world that has estranged us, where aliens are amongst us and technology is second pulse; the eternal rising question what is fact, what is fiction is staring back at us as we come to close another decade.
The new POTUS recently called immigrants ‘criminal aliens’, asking for them to be sent back, where from to where? Why must we always get rid of them? In In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Margaret Atwood essays many such concerns and a recent reading directed my curiosity to some writerly questions: Is anything with a cameo by an alien considered science fiction? Can poetry be sci-fi? Can aliens be us?