Fiction & the science of escaping earth...with love, or hate?

Days and nights are filled with biased and misleading information in pursuit of gaining political mileage.

- NIRAD MUDUR

Simply put, propaganda rules. This includes spreading information, arguments, half-truths, full lies, and rumors, to influence public opinion. Fiction is its active component, and yet we don't consider it as such, preferring to fall for it or fight it, depending on who is floating the malicious stuff—a political party or a faction that one favors, or opposes.

Fiction is born out of imagination. That it easily caters to propaganda is not the fault of fiction, but that of devious—albeit imaginative—minds using it to float propaganda. Had we been alert to what is fiction and what is not, probably we would have been more adept at sniffing it out. Since we are not, we let it provide us some form of excitement in life, loving it if it serves our ideology or opinion, hating it if it doesn't.

Whichever side wins, hate spreads. Hate wins. Let's cut to a more refreshing form of fiction: Science fiction. Refreshing, because it provides different scenarios, different possibilities, very different narratives, completely diverting our minds on routes away from the mundane.

That's why science fiction is held in awe, triggering our imaginations beyond set limits. Especially popular in this genre of fiction is "extraterrestrial life," and works dealing with the billion-dollar question: "Does extraterrestrial life exist?"