As a general rule, science fiction tends to be located in an imagined future or alternative present. The settings may be utopian or dystopian and the themes innumerable, but a constant hallmark is that of potentiality: how the world could be different to how it is now. This is why, in death, science-fiction writers are often lauded as prophets. Isaac Asimov explored the domains of robotic artificial intelligence before it started to become a reality; Arthur C Clarke is credited with devising the idea of the geostationary artificial satellite; and Philip K Dick doubted objective reality before postmodernism and cyberspace came along.
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