"It is absurd to condemn them [science fiction stories] because they do not often display any deep or sensitive characterization. They oughtn't to. … Every good writer knows that the more unusual the scenes and events of his story are, the slighter, more ordinary, the more typical his persons should be. Hence Gulliver is a commonplace little man and Alice is a commonplace little girl. If they had been more remarkable they would have wrecked their books. The Ancient Mariner himself is a very ordinary man. To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much; he who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange."
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C. S. Lewis, "On Science Fiction", 24 November 1955 talk to the Cambridge University English Club on; published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Science_fiction
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Science fiction
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