Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Clarke’s remark is a pointed argument about the imaginative diet of those who govern. Westerns and detective stories tend to rehearse familiar moral scripts—frontier justice, individual heroism, crimes solved within an established social order—whereas science fiction is built to model systemic change: new technologies, altered environments, and unforeseen consequences. By urging politicians toward science fiction, Clarke implies that effective policy requires anticipatory thinking, comfort with uncertainty, and an ability to reason about long-term futures rather than short-term conflicts. The line also reflects Clarke’s broader belief that public decision-making should be informed by scientific literacy and by narratives that expand the range of plausible futures.