Speculative Fiction Writes the Future

The present is reality’s workshop. It is where scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, artists, activists, farmers, journalists, and policymakers construct the world we inhabit. The present is where things happen. We live at the crest of the breaking wave of time.

As soon as we make something, it becomes part of the past, a brick in history’s foundation. The moment we pass a law, adopt a puppy, discover a new scientific principle, publish a blog post, solve a problem, start a business, or ask someone on a date, it forms the context for the next moment. We stand in the present, forging the past.

The future is not our destination. It is our great constraint: we can only build what we can imagine. The future is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves, a shared dream to be realized through shared effort, a horizon of infinite possibilities limited only by our vision.

The future consists not of atoms or bits, but imagination. It is not the endpoint of a deterministic trend, but contingent and always subject to reinvention. The future is a question to be answered by what we choose to do next.

We all imagine possible futures all the time. What do we want to be when we grow up? What should we make for lunch? What if we dropped everything to travel to a distant land? What kind of world are we leaving to our children? To be human is to speculate.

Speculative fiction takes these “what if” questions further by weaving thought experiments into narrative. What if genetic engineers resurrected dinosaurs? Read (or watch) Jurassic Park. What if we reinvented democracy for the internet age? Read Infomocracy. What if a billionaire hijacked the climate with geoengineering? Read my novel, Veil. What if we used our political, cultural, and technological powers to build a kinder world order? Read Too Like the Lightning. 

When I discovered the insanely impressive feats of science and engineering required to fabricate the chip that powers my laptop, and that modern civilization depends on laser-wielding robots (EUV lithography machines) in one of the most hotly contested territories on Earth (Taiwan), I knew I had to write a novel exploring the implications. What if spies weaponized semiconductors to secure geopolitical influence?

We need stories to contextualize important questions without easy answers.