“Around the Dark Dial” by J.D. Sanderson genuinely surprised me more than once. And sure, I was precisely the right kind of target audience, but it taps right into one of the most incredible qualities of Sci-Fi, which is the demand for introspection from the audience.
In my full review, I talked about how this short story collection reminded me often of my favorite formative sci-fi series, "Star Trek," and with the new show "Strange New Worlds," out—I recently had a conversation with someone that baffled me. Their complaint was essentially summed up as, and I'm paraphrasing, "ugh, remember when Star Trek wasn't about commenting on politics?"
My answer was no, of course. I also contend that what this person was terming "politics" was actually a commentary on society and further contend that all good sci-fi is in one form or another is social commentary. This has been true all the way back to Mary Shelley. It's what I love about Sanderson's book and the genre. That idea that things don't have to be the way they are and could be different, possibly even better. The arguments are baked right into the rhetoric of the stories.
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