You are caged in. A square box. A few square metres, max. Bouncing between job, bills, responsibilities, sleep, taxes. Never breaking out. Too weak to bend the steel. Too tired. You don't sleep. You fall into a coma every night. Depleted. Finished. The free spirited animal confined. After years of the same trot you have forgotten what life outside could offer. That another existence is not only possible but aligned with your desires, your needs, your soul.
Look closer at the bars. No steel anywhere. Just arithmetic. Rent. Council tax. The car. The food. The phone. Each bar is a monthly number, and the wage is the exact width of the cage. The cage maker never welded anything. He only made sure your outgoings matched your income to the pound.
Science fiction is the exploration of ideas and what-if scenarios. Rooted in the laws of nature. That separates it from fantasy. No imaginative magic. Real magic. Scientific progress, indistinguishable from magic if extrapolated far enough. Science fiction pushes the boundary of what humans can imagine. If you want to know what comes next you must think beyond today's existence.
Notice something about every future you ever loved reading. Nobody in it pays rent. Nobody clocks in. The crew wakes, eats, argues, explores. The wage has gone, and the story never bothers to explain where. Science fiction solved your money problem centuries before it solved faster than light travel. That is the first cage it removes. You have already spent hundreds of hours living without a payslip. You just did it in someone else's head.
Many people don't like science fiction. Too abstract. Too unrealistic. Not tied to their own life. New ideas challenge the status quo and change makes people uncomfortable. The cage gives structure, support, gets you through the day. It also takes away agency. Explore new worlds and you must take the wheel. Nobody is holding your hand. The prize is enlightenment, and the price is choice. New rules to learn. New cliffs to navigate. It takes effort. Autopilot is easier, and autopilot is what the cage maker sells. So they sneer. Dream on. Woolgathering. Escapism. Wrong. It is a rehearsal for the real thing. The animal that has seen open ground knows which way to run when the gate swings.
Here is the private version of the story. Capital income overtaking your spend. Escape velocity. The month your assets pay the rent instead of your Tuesday morning. It sounds like science fiction because it is the same move: a what-if, rooted in arithmetic, extrapolated far enough to look like magic. Stop selling hours. Become capital.
The longing you feel on the last page of a good novel has a German name. Sehnsucht. A pull towards a place you have never been but recognise. Trust it. That is the animal remembering the open ground. You need to make a choice. Walk the perimeter for one more year, or bend the bars now. They were only ever numbers.