Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

Lessing’s remark treats science fiction not as escapist entertainment but as a shared language—an expressive “dialect”—suited to modern experience. Read this way, “space” narratives become a vehicle for thinking about large-scale forces that shape contemporary life: technological acceleration, political systems, ecological limits, and the sense of living in a rapidly changing, partially unknowable world. Calling it a dialect implies both accessibility and specificity: the genre offers a set of images, plots, and metaphors (aliens, futures, other worlds) that let writers and readers discuss present realities indirectly, sometimes more freely than realist forms allow.