the space program and the idea of contacting extraterrestrial civilizations. Carl Sagan wrote: "Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction." Science fiction tries to blend fiction and reality seamlessly so that the viewer can be immersed in the imaginative world. This includes characters, settings, and tools and perhaps most critically, the scientific plausibility and accuracy of technology and technological concepts. Sometimes, science fiction forecasts real life innovations and discoveries. Science fiction has predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon. In the 2020 series Away astronauts use a real-life Mars rover called InSight to listen intently for a landing on Mars. Two years later in 2022 scientists used InSight to listen for the landing of a real spacecraft. In the Jurassic Park franchise, dinosaurs are created from ancient DNA and 18 years later, real life scientists found dinosaur DNA in ancient fossils. Brian Aldiss described science fiction as "cultural wallpaper." Evidence for this widespread influence can be found in trends for writers to employ science fiction as a tool for advocacy and generating cultural insights, as well as for educators when teaching across a range of academic disciplines not limited to the natural sciences. Scholar and science fiction critic George Edgar Slusser said that science fiction "is the one real international literary form we have today, and as such has branched out to visual media, interactive media and on to whatever new media the world will invent in the 21st century. Crossover issues between the sciences and the humanities are crucial for the century to come." As protest literature Science fiction has sometimes been used as a means of social protest. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is an important work of dystopian science fiction. It is often invoked in protests against governments and leaders who are seen as totalitarian. James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar was intended as a protest against imperialism, and specifically the European colonization of the Americas. Robots, artificial humans, human clones, intelligent computers, and their possible conflicts with human society have all been major themes of science fiction since, at least, the publication of Shelly's Frankenstein. Some critics have seen this as reflecting authors’ concerns over the social alienation seen in modern society. Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs gender