Science fiction and fantasy provide their adherents with imagined histories of future or alternate worlds. These stories are shaped by the present circumstances of their composition, among them the real histories of this world. This second Perspectives issue on fiction, like its predecessor in December 2021, celebrates and explores the connections between history, imagination, and reality that sci-fi and fantasy present. From the shifting historical memory of the American Revolution to video games and icosahedrons, everything has a history—even the future.
Image: Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain; NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, The Pillars of Creation, CC BY 4.0.
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