Readers of my blog may have noticed my love of science fiction.  I loved reading as a child, even if I could not explain the thrill I felt when reading Jules Verne’s or HG Wells’ works.

I recently felt vindicated in my love of the genre, when I read the following comment by Neil Gaiman on The Guardian:

“I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the…