Escape And Education

Fiction writers can not only entertain by offering an escape from reality but also educate by reflecting reality and can even do both simultaneously. Ingenious. We can do some of this for ourselves with help from imaginative authors. My own immediate environment is exotic enough:

in London, a devotee of Krishna offers me free vegetarian food;

in Birmingham, a Muslim propagandist hands me a free Koran while a passerby tells me that I should read the Bible;

in Liverpool, I passed a parish church, a mosque, a Krishna Temple and a Latin Rite Catholic Church before returning to my apartment to meditate -

- and all of this reminds me of Poul Anderson's Technic civilization where:

on Avalon, Tabitha Falkayn says that we are mostly of the Old Faith in Highsky Choth;

on diverse planets, the natives are converted to Terrestrial religions;

in the Patrician system, a revolutionary proclamation claims that the Divine in whatever form It manifests Itself to you is with us! (See here.)

Three powerful statements, from an epic, a play and a traditional story respectively, have gained a universal significance:

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" (I fear Greeks bringing gifts);
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark";
"...appointment in Samara."

Here we discussed the politics of Mongo, Barsoom, Technic civilization, the Emberverse and that other strange mental construct, contemporary Britain. Imagine one Zodangan trying to assassinate the Jeddak of Helium or to sabotage a Heliumite airship while another leads a peaceful protest against Heliumite occupation or imagine similar political differences between Anderson's Braeans. Such is fictional life.