[The following essay was published in a special issue of Science-Fiction Studies devoted to Philip K. Dick's works.]

In SF there is little room left for creative work that would aspire to deal with problems of our time without mystification, oversimplification, or facile entertainment: e.g., for work which would reflect on the place that Reason can occupy in the Universe, on the outer limits of concepts formed on Earth as instruments of cognition, or on such consequences of contacts with extraterrestrial life as find no place in the desperately primitive repertoire of SF devices (bounded by the alternative "we win"/"they win")…. Whoever brings up the heavy artillery of comparative ethnology, cultural anthropology and sociology against such devices is told that he is using a cannon to shoot sparrows, since it is merely a matter of entertainment; once he falls silent, the voices of the apologists for...