The mature science fiction author doesn’t merely tell a story about Brick Malloy vs The Giant Yeastmen from Gethsemane. He makes a statement through a story. What is the statement? Himself, his own dimension and depth. His statement is seeing what everybody else sees but thinking what no one else has thought, and having the courage to say it. The hell of it is that only time will tell whether it was worth saying.

Alfred Bester, “My Affair With Science Fiction” in Hell’s Cartographers