Science Fiction is often cautionary, occasionally exploratory, and hopefully entertaining in the bargain. But there's another use to it that I've been giving some thought to, and it's one of those blessing/curse things. While SF isn't much use for predicting the future, it's been a lot of help in adjusting to it. Thanks in large part to the imaginings of SF, both literary and its media offshoots, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock is largely absorbed by the culture without a constant series of culturequakes, though a few technotremors get through from time to time.

(Image: Alvin Toffler's 1970 work set the standard for dread of that undiscovered country...but SF has sent probes ahead to map it out and bring back the news that the future isn't so strange...once you've been there.)

(Source: SFRevu)