Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Reading Science Fiction

Lesson: Advanced Technology Isn’t Everything (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams)
Science fiction often centers on the assumption that we will conquer the universe through the liberal use of gadgets and awesome weapons, but Adams’ classics teach a far more important lesson: the most useful tool you can have is, in fact, a towel. Like people who drive into lakes because their GPS tells them to, relying overmuch on technology can get you into trouble—knowing how to use a physical tool in creative ways, on the other hand, might save your life.

Lesson: Chances Are, What You Do Today Won’t Matter (from Rick and Morty)
We all like to think we’re the secret star of our own Truman Show, but with awesome power comes awesome responsibility, and few of us are really ready to be The One Who Saves the Universe. So, relax, and don’t stress: there’s an excellent chance that you’re actually not important at all, and thus will have no responsibilities at all when the Ultimate War between Light and Dark begins. As Morty says, “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.” (Come to think of it, Douglas Adams covered this one too with the Total Perspective Vortex.)

Lesson: Everything Wants to Kill You (from Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson)
One fundamental takeaway from nearly every work of science fiction to date: it’s a big universe, and everything out there wants to kill you. Not only do the other creatures on Earth very likely want to kill you, but anything—literally anything—you encounter from anywhere else will likely want to kill you as well. (In Kim Stanley Robinson’s colonizing-space-is-doomed treatise, it’s the undetectable subatomic particles that get you.) If you ever find yourself traveling through space, or witnessing an alien spacecraft landing, keep this in mind and it just might save your life…for a little while, at least.

Lesson: If You Ever Come Across the Words “Clone or Robot Army” in a Referendum, Vote No (from Orphan Black and Battlestar Galactica)
Science fiction is sick with clones and robots made to look like humans. Meanwhile, recent Earth events have shown us that the referendum might be the most awesome weapon of destruction ever devised. Conclusion: if you’re ever asked to vote on whether we should start making super advanced robots or gin up clones of Jango Fett to destroy the Jedi and seize total control—vote no.

Lesson: True Virtual Reality Will be Mankind’s Last Achievement before Extinction (from The Dilbert Future, by Scott Adams)
Scott Adams humorously suggested that if we ever actually invented the Holodeck from Star Trek, it would be mankind’s last accomplishment. Considering Star Trek is the only time a sci-fi story has presented any form of virtual reality as a good thing (until the holo matrix goes on the fritz again and starts creating sentient criminal masterminds and whatnot), while every other story is basically a horrorshow on the robot-squid-monsters level of The Matrix, we’d have to agree. The moment Apple announces iWorlds, pack your Go Bag and move into the bunker, because civilization’s over and done with.

Lesson: Monarchy is the New Black (from Red Rising by Pierce Brown; Dune, by Frank Herbert; Star Wars; eleventy million other books)
Sci-fi often takes a very dim very of modern systems of government, perpetually imagining that advanced futuristic societies will be feudal in nature, lousy with emperors, kings, and complex aristocracies modeled, bizarrely, on Medieval Europe or Ancient Rome. Why in the world people with access to personal teleporters or disintegration rayguns would tolerate a king remains a mystery.

Lesson: The Revolution Will, In Fact, be Televised (from Icon, by Genevieve Valentine; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; Battle Royale by Koushun Takami)
Sci-fi also teaches us that the media will be both the greatest tool of our oppression (pro tip: when they arrive to install your 1984 Wall Television, it’s already too late), as well as the secret to overthrowing totalitarian governments, as SF holds a firm belief that the secret to freedom is exposing things on TV. As long as you don’t broadcast your exposé or stirring “Who’s with Me?” speech during the season finale of Game of Thrones, you have a chance.

Lesson: Expertise is for Wimps (from Doctor Who)
You might that in order to operate complicated machines like, say, an F-22 Raptor or an alien spaceship, you’d need a lot of training. WRONG. Sci-fi assures us otherwise, as people are constantly stealing things like the TARDIS and making them work by jabbing buttons until something happens. Heck, the Doctor often goes on about how dangerous the TARDIS is, yet he only has the vaguest notion of how to actually operate it.
What have you learned from science fiction?