#it hits on why a lot of contemporary scifi feels a bit hollow to me

[alectoism]

But it was partly from colonial adventure stories like Mary’s that science fiction was born. From the beginning, science fiction drew on Westerns and exploration stories. [...] Even now, much of science fiction is about travel and hardship, technology and “magic,” contact with the alien, outposts on the frontier. The first time Alice saw Star Trek, she recognized it at once as a story about her childhood. But science fiction also has the power to rewrite the colonial narrative. It can acknowledge and even celebrate cultural confusion, bring human and alien together, change the intentions and the endings.

Julie Phillips, James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon