Social science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society. In other words, it "absorbs and discusses anthropology", and speculates about human behavior and interactions.
Exploration of fictional societies is a significant aspect of science fiction, allowing it to perform predictive (H. G. Wells, The Final Circle of Paradise) and precautionary (Fahrenheit 451) functions, to criticize the contemporary world (Antarctica-online) and to present solutions (Walden Two), to portray alternative societies (World of the Noon) and to examine the implications of ethical principles (the works of Sergei Lukyanenko).
Read more about Social Science Fiction: Social Science Fiction in English, The Genre in The Eastern Bloc, Examples From The 1940s
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“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
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—Clare Boothe Luce (19031987)
“Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”
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“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
—Flannery OConnor (19251964)