Let me begin with a topic which may seem as far removed from speculative fiction as you can get. Petra, the daughter of some Czech friends, is studying in Germany and has a written a scientific paper for a British technical journal in (of course) English. So, as I knew the subject matter and was a first language English speaker, she asked me if would mind looking over it? Of course, I volunteered, and I have done just that. Anyway, Petra, if you’re reading this, I think it’s a great start to a promising academic career and I’m awed that you have written it in what is probably your third language.

Now what Petra said in her covering letter was something like this: ‘I tried to check the manuscript as far as I can, but I know it so well that I do not see the mistakes.’ That last phrase, ‘I know it so well that I do not see the mistakes’ struck me. One of the curiosities of the human race is that we so rapidly get used to so much. For instance, this morning, I oversaw my students taking what was only my third geology practical exam for an external exam board. These are important: in our results-centred culture, it is not just students who are tested by exams but also their teachers. Anyway, only three years ago, when I sat in on the first one, I was almost shaking with nervous expectation. This time, I nearly fell asleep.

And how much do we take for granted! In terms of the good things we so easily take as a given health, wealth, friends and family. And in terms of the bad, we can easily treat as unexceptional, our rudeness, arrogance and a hundred other forms of general personal nastiness. We are creatures of tradition: we like nothing more than to make the remarkable unremarkable. The most appalling things can become too familiar to arouse our emotions. I have listened to the heavy boom-boom of shelling a few miles away and observed my colleagues treat that sound of men seeking to kill each other as no more significant than the rustle of the wind. Even death can become unremarkable.

At the risk of being simplistic this leads to two problems. The first is the sin of unacknowledged blessing. We fail to give thanks to God, not because we do not believe in him but because we have simply failed to see that we have been blessed. We eat our daily bread without realising that its very presence on our tables is a blessing. The second problem, which is worse, is the sin of unacknowledged guilt. We fail to admit that we are sinners in thought, word or action because we have become so used to what we are. Of our own lives we truly may say ‘I know it so well that I do not see the mistakes.’ Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt; sometimes, it merely breeds complacency.

And here friends, is one role of speculative fiction. It is to take the commonplace world we make of our lives and look at it from such a strange and unfamiliar angle that we are forced to see things afresh. It is to apply a highlighter to those comfortable or uncomfortable truths have come to deny so easily.

It is sometimes assumed that the prophetic task is to proclaim new truths. This is a lie, the main prophetic task is to remind us of what we have always known but that have come to take for granted. One of the many tasks we have as Christian writers is to remind others – and sometimes ourselves – of the blessings we need to acknowledge and the sins we need to confess.