Fahrenheit 451 and What Science Fiction Is and Does
Listen.
If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong.
Any story is about a host of things. It is about the author, it is about the world the author sees and deals with and lives in; it is about the words chosen and the way those words are deployed; it is about the story itself and what happens in the story; it is about the people in the story; it is polemic; it is opinion.
An author’s opinions of what a story is about are always valid and are always true: the author was there after all, when the book was written. She came up with each word and knows why he used that word instead of another. But an author is a creature of her time, and even she cannot see everything that her book is about.
Neil Gaiman - “The View from The Cheap Seats”
