Modern science-fiction - a discussion

We recently had a nice conversation about science-fiction. It sounded like "droben zog ein alter rabe gerade eine turmuhr auf" because we spoke German, which is why I tried to translate it. Here you go:

Me:
Alright, we're now having a pedagogically useful literature lesson. I give you some names, you should know them, and you tell me what they have in common. Savvy?
Tris, Maddie, Thomas, Tally, Katniss, Ria.
Plus some dates: 2011, 2011, 2010, 2005, 2008, 2012.
Nicole:
REVOLUTION
Divergent - Awaken - The Maze Runner - Uglies - The Hunger Games - Die Verratenen (German)
Uglies is already that old?
Me:
More.
Nicole:
More?
They are rather involuntarily the symbol of the revolution.
Me:
Other aspects.
Nicole:
All of them are teenagers.
Why are we talking about literature?
Me:
Catastrophy as precondition for a change in the worldorder.
Nicole:
Even in matters with Maddie?
Me:
I wonder whether there is a recipe for the modern science-fiction and whether it is worth climbing on the bandwagon and just working it off according to the book or if one should deal with the literature in the same way as the characters of the popular books deal with their governments, in other words revolutionize against it.
I have to attend math lessons.

---

I think of books as mirrors. Not of every book of course, but of the majority of good books. I believe that books somehow reflect the time it is written in. Like, todays science-fiction shows what the world is like today.

Let's think of some well-known book, for example "The Hunger Games": it takes place in America, which is then called Panem. The country is devided into twelve districts and the capitol. So where is the mirror? I'm pretty sure that by the time I'm writing this post (although I don't want to take responsibility for what it is like tomorrow) America consists of fifty-or-so states.

But think about these aspects of Panem:
There are very rich people that always consume more and more.
There are very poor people that are almost starving and have to produce more and more for the rich people to consume.
The rich people use the poor people for their own entertainment.
The poor people don't have any rights.

When we read "The Hunger Games" in class, my english teacher said the hunger games were an exaggeration of todays TV shows, like The Jungle Camp, showing us how far our society will get if we don't stop enjoying the others discomfort. I would go one step further and say that Panem shows us how our world aready is. It shows us how we capitalise the efforts of those who can't defend themselves.

So let's have a quick look at "Awaken": I totally hate sitting in a café with the person across from me only staring at their phone. In Awaken, this shit is normal. And among us teenagers, it is amost the standard when we hang out. Not amog adults though. Awaken says: "Kids, this is what you look like. Is this what you want the world to be like? Because if there was only you, it would be reality." I don't want to complain about social media in this post, there might be another one, but I at least hope that showing such problems of our society is part of the purpose of science-fiction.

That's it. It somehow fits every book named above.

-Julia