This book demonstrates how science fiction offers new insights into current social issues and helps students become more creative in their thinking about the future. Chapters begin with a discussion of science fiction through "what if" questions. From there chapters explore the concept of ecological balances through a combination of sciences fiction and fact; selected sciences fiction works which can be used to pose the problem of overpopulation; ways in which science fiction can be used to help students confront the love/hate relationship which exists between men and machines; the automobile as revealed through the extrapolations of the science fiction writer; the threat of nuclear destruction as treated in science fiction; ways in which science fiction has dealt with social order and control, and deviance and nonconformity, tolerance and compassion, economic principles, the decay of cities, and speculations on the future; and how science fiction may be used to approach the study of generation gaps. Student exercises and selected bibliographies accompany each chapter. (HOD)