Change in perspective

When I was eleven years old I loved the sort of science fiction story where some engineer is faced with a problem — maybe concerning time travel or some emergency aboard an interstellar space ship — and then cleverly figures out a way to solve that problem. I couldn’t get enough of stories like that.

I remember one time around then looking at an issue of The New Yorker magazine. I tried reading one of the short stories, since I’d heard they were very good.

I couldn’t get through it. The story was full of conversations about feelings and relationships, and all the characters in it seemed like boring people talking about meaningless things. It just didn’t seem to be about anything.

When I was eighteen I was reading a short story in The New Yorker when I recalled that experience from seven years earlier. As it happened, the story was full of conversations about feelings and relationships, and all the characters in it seemed like fascinating people talking about meaningful things.

Curious, I picked up one of the SciFi stories I had loved back when I was eleven years old. To my bemusement, I could hardly get through it. I found the story to be completely boring. It just didn’t seem to be about anything.

2 thoughts on “Change in perspective”

  1. I remember loving science fiction from middle school through college. Now it’s difficult for me to read fiction at all.

    I’m much more curious about the real world I’m in.

  2. To be more complete: It was just that particular kind of science fiction that I lost my taste for. I still read fiction of many genres, including SciFi, and I also see plays and movies of all kinds. I think this is mostly because they help me relate to the real world I’m in and am curious about. I realize that everyone is different in this regard.

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