SOURCE: "On Being a Literary Pariah," in Extrapolation, Vol. 17, No. 2, May, 1976, pp. 168-71.

In the following essay, Aldiss comments on his innovative and often controversial view that science fiction is "only a department of fantasy" fiction.

And of course literary pariahs don't hang around the perimeter howling to be let in. They're daring everyone inside to come out . . .

Science fiction does not form the future; it is the future which forms sf.

A truism to begin with, to lull everyone into a false sense of security. All is change—an eternal truth always having to be relearned, often with tears, and re-emphasised in this present decade with the shifting power-balances of the world, such as the enormous growth of Soviet military power, the steady ascendancy of China, the Power Crisis (linked with the new-found political consciousness of the Arab World), the events in Africa, the rise of Brazil...