It’s true. Science fiction by its very nature has a political stance, one which, hypothetically, can vary infinitely with the author, but which is, in practice, overwhelmingly rationalist, humanist, and socially progressive (though a bastion of conservative and libertarian voices also exists).
Read my full review of the modern political science fiction anthology at AE.
It sounds like a novel but The Boy in the Book is more properly a memoir which is aping the pretensions of a novel. At times it is like a confessional, at other times like long-form journalism or general non-fiction, but for the greater portion of the book, Penlington employs the conceit introduced a few chapters in that, like the Choose Your Own Adventure books he loved, his story will henceforth be continually in the present-tense (though he doesn’t go so far as to write in the second person; first person as befits a memoir).
You can read my full review at the Winnipeg Free Press.
To even casual readers of science fiction, Robert A. Heinlein needs no introduction, but he made waves outside the genre as well. His three most famous and controversial books managed to scandalize or offend an amazing number of otherwise non-overlapping demographics.