If we do not see that our existence and this world are totally astonishing, we have only to open our eyes and engage our common sense: what the blazes is going on, and what on Earth are we doing?
 
Science fiction & fantasy writers are philosophers and social anthropologists who ask questions that others may deem too far out, too challenging. They play, not with toys in space, but with ideas, questioning our fundamental assumptions of what reality is, what we are, how we got this way and how else we might be. In doing so, they hold up powerful mirrors to the world.
 
Ask the writer, and they may tell you that they did not set out to do this: they just wanted to figure something out, to spin their story, to delight in the play: but it is what happened. Good science fiction and fantasy deals in our dramatic human condition like any other interesting writing, only its perspective is wider. It tends to look at the big picture. It is also typically irreverent, original and entertaining. It takes on serious matters without posturing or solemnity. SFF writers have more fun.
 
The child who takes the thrill of questioning and wondering into adulthood develops the faculty of creative imagination. This is the faculty that operates at the cutting edge in science or the humanities. It is also what puts the sparkle in a person’s eyes. Science fiction done well—and then it is modern myth, grounded in the real world—is a supreme exponent of the creative imagination and its infinite realm. It asks the most powerful question anyone can ask themselves: “What if…?” It talks of other worlds and other ways, in order to speak of this one.
 
For this fiction opens our eyes to new possibilities, not so much of future times as of present time, and other ways of living together. It arises out of the boldness to imagine much more. Ursula Le Guin: “Capitalism[’s] …. power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.” Such imagination creates the potential for the new. It is hopeful in that way, and creative.
 
Is there science in science fiction? Sure there is. Engineers employ the same exploratory vision. As Heinlein pointed out, the space suit developed by the US military was uncannily similar to that first visualized by Edmond Hamilton in a 1931 story.
 
If ever SF features rocket ships and weird beasts on alien worlds, they are today’s equivalent of the ocean vessels of 16th century explorers, whose maps bore the legend: “Here be monsters.” Free your mind, the genre is saying, to go off and explore, and discover what’s out there—or in there. Because perhaps ‘out’ and ‘in’ is an illusory distinction? If you aren’t keen on the style, fair enough. You pays your money, as they say, and you takes your choice. As Kingsley Amis put it, science fiction is like jazz: “you either dig it or you don’t.”
 
Like it or not, dystopia is where we’re at. The genre’s speculative imagination is of vital importance in warning of scenarios that may well ensue from the present state. When experts speak of the existential threats presented by artificial intelligence, they have often been preceded in fiction by Philip K. Dick and his peers.
 
Ask the cosmologist who sees patterns in physical reality emerging that mirror mystic teachings and she may tell you that SF’s speculation is restrained and doesn’t go far enough. The particular challenge for the SF and fantasy writer is to make it both engaging and believable. “Only real life can get away with the really outrageous stuff. The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.” (Iain Banks)
 
Fiction can take place in an outlandish world (this one, even) and still own that believability that will speak to us. It depends on whether premise is interesting and the predicament is relevant; on whether the relationships are real, the social world is recognizably coherent, and how the action plays out. The fiction can then be fun and serious, just as we are.
 
Don’t just take my word for it, listen to Captain Kirk: “Good science fiction is humanity, moved into a different milieu. Great stories are great stories. You put human beings on a spaceship or a deserted planet, and we’ve got another way to see ourselves.” (William Shatner, 2024)

The trench warfare of World War One was one of the most insane episodes of human history. Faulks succeeds better than anyone I know in reproducing life in this death, this hell. The carnage, the chaos, the murdering of men’s emotion before dispatching them. There is little hope offered by the story, nor should there be, once we come to understand the meaningless of survival. Love, with Isabelle, will simply be one more casualty for Stephen Wraysford. The depiction of the hopeless tunnels, where to make a sound could bring dark, brutal death, is prodigious writing.

Hisako Onoda is a Japanese cellist, on her way by sea to give recitals in Europe. Hisako’s voyage is interrupted when an uprising in Panama temporarily closes the Panama Canal, and hers is one of a few ships moored in the Gatún Lake. While they wait for the Canal to reopen, Hisako, who is forty-four, enjoys a younger French lover from another ship, goes diving with him, and participates in the social events held between the ships.
 
So far, it is a travelogue, and the reader feels a natural empathy for this fairly solitary artist from a poor background, who has struggled to succeed, is now acclaimed, yet has remained modest. We sympathize with her plight at having to take a long trip by sea on account of an acute fear of flying, and we are amused by the antics and entreaties of her agent, Mr Moriya, and the conversational exchanges of the different characters, similarly confined on the ship.  There is something of a stage play about these people forced together and going nowhere fast.
 
This being Iain Banks, we expect more than just a mood piece and the action, when it comes, is full on. We are already rooting for Ms Onoda by this point, but not even when we appreciate her physical capability and mental strength can we seriously see how she might survive.
 
The only time my interest waned was with the long dreams—it seems that other people’s dreams are boring even in fiction—but the action sequences are cleverly done, which is a real skill.
 
Banks considered Canal Dreams the least of his novels. Perhaps because it is his most conventional? He preferred his rip-roaring, leviathan Culture novels, but this simpler story is a neat and well put-together read that has its own merits. There is even a Graham Greene-ish feel in the encounter with the “venceristas”.