If I Could Travel Back in Time, What I’d Tell My Younger Self About Reading Science Fiction

If I could travel back to 11/25/64, the day I turned 13, to talk with myself, I’d warn him about the dangers of reading science fiction. In the Fall of 1964, I became addicted to science fiction after discovering Robert A. Heinlein. I wouldn’t try to convince my younger self not to read science fiction, because I’m quite sure he wouldn’t listen. This morning I listened to “What Is It Like to Be a Cucumber?” on AppleNews+. It’s a profile of scientist Michael Levin in the Intelligencer section of New York Magazine. Levin read science fiction when he was young, but he mostly read science books. Over the years, I’ve realized that was my mistake too. Future historians might claim Levin is the kind of maverick scientist whose radical insights were as paradigm-shifting as the Copernican Revolution. Just go watch a few of these YouTube videos to see what I mean, or read Michael Pollan’s new book A World Appears. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up and become a scientist because of reading…