Prometheus was a great example of this. I’ve had more than one conversation since seeing it about some of the issues it raises — faith, sacrifice, our place in the universe — that genuinely felt like new conversations. Instead of having to draw on my own limited experience on earth, I could draw on my interpretation of events from across the galaxy. The ideas rose to the surface.
And on a more basic level, Science Fiction is really the only genre that allows us to deal with problems that haven’t come up yet, and particularly technology that hasn’t been perfected yet. If you want to talk about the ethics of artificial intelligence or the isolation of space travel, there’s nowhere else to go.