And my sense of the others was that they were somehow not fully human in the same sense I was. It was a belief encouraged, indirectly, by the institutions and people among whom I lived. But one cannot survive an encounter with A. E. Van Vogt's terrifying Couerl, or engage in conversation with Fred Hoyle's Black Cloud, and still think that skin color or religious opinion constitutes true difference. One learns quickly that, poised against the infinite that extends around us in all directions, we are a single species. And ultimately one family.
Scientific tales tend to promote an interest in the way the universe works.
I have no figures to support this, but numerous men and women in the sciences, and particularly in physics, astronomy, and space technology, have reported the early influence of Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov , and their peers. Get him a book by Greg Bear. We live in an age of decreasing literacy. I was an English teacher for ten years back in the sixties, before the problem became epidemic. But even then, students were far too busy with the TV and the exhilarating business of growing up to want to read very much.