Alvin Toffler called it “Future Shock” – the feeling that things are changing too fast for us to keep up, the disorientation and stress you face as we lurch into the future. Science fiction, speculative fiction, the fiction of the imagination, it’s a cushion, or perhaps a buffer, against future shock. Ad time changes us in the world we live in, speculative fiction was already there, providing us with a way to understand the world in which we now find ourselves.
Introduction

The Left Hand of Darkness