Science Fiction and Book Clubs

This is from an interview with a member of a St. Paul book club, which appeared in the Minnesota Women's Press:

Q: What book by a female author sparked a great discussion?

A. Two come to mind. Margaret Atwoods's Oryx and Crake sparked great discussion because it's speculative fiction, but we could see how science fiction had (the) potential for reality. It was scary and sobering to look at science as being ahead of morality and a world spinning quickly out of control.

The other book that spurred great discussion was The Giver by Lois Lowry. This book is also science fiction. The aspect that sparked discussion was there wasn't a clear-cut ending, it's up for interpretation. Every person can bring her own ideas of what really happened and whether the characters go on from there.

It's interesting that the two books that sparked serious discussion were SF. Can we learn anything from this?