Beyond the historical exploration into the ties between science fiction and the Cold War that this class brought was the deeper understanding into how authors develop their reality-bending settings. I touched upon it early with the idea of cognitive estrangement, but the defining text that developed my view of science fiction was Samuel L. Delany’s About 5,750 Words. The first of the main points in the essay is how texts are a constantly evolving image that is caused by every progressive word. The second is how science fiction allows for the images created by the text to be absolutely limitless. With this freedom, authors are able to explore the issues that are present in our reality today from different perspectives, or they can present us entirely new questions for humanity to deal with. Below are blog posts that go more in depth with Delany’s text.