Forecasting Tomorrow: How Science Fiction Is Helping Scientists Explore Possible Futures

Data is the stuff of stories, and so scientific papers are presented in ways that convey a narrative. You could even map a study onto the bones of a traditional hero’s journey, whereby the initially naïve researchers embark on a trip of discovery, gather their treasures as they go, and eventually reflect on their experience and lessons at journey’s end. However, it’s mostly a non-fiction exercise, offering an account of something that actually happened rather than something made up. So, does this mean fiction has no role to play in science? 

On the face of it, science and fiction may seem antithetical outside of books or TV shows. Sure, we hear about science fiction stories leading to the creation of new technologies – such as cell phones being inspired by Star Trek communicators – but this involved someone taking an idea presented as fiction and making it real. And yet fiction is increasingly becoming a powerful tool within the scientific repertoire. That’s because, in some instances, the techniques involved in creating a fictional setting can help researchers explore potential future scenarios or complex questions, such as what role AI technologies will play in different contexts, how future climate change may impact certain contexts, or even how the people of tomorrow may respond to off-world settling.

To explore the value of this narrative turn, I spoke to three researchers who have embraced storytelling to explore the uncertainties and possibilities we may face in our individual and collective futures. While projections of the future we currently face may seem intimidating, it seems this method may be one that offers a glimmer of hope for those addressing the more challenging issues on the horizon.

Once upon a time in a future far, far away

“Stories are something that human brains are particularly good at metabolizing and making meaning from and connecting with,” Joey Eschrich, Managing Editor at the Center for Science and Imagination (CSI) at Arizona State University, told IFLScience.

“They elicit our emotions and can allow us to get out of our own perspective a bit. [They] also function as shared points of reference that can make conversations more productive, hopefully.”  

Science fiction stories are often really good at getting at what science and technology studies scholars call the ‘techno-social’, the kind of [overlap] of technological change with social change, with collective decision making.

Joey Eschrich

Eschrich should know; in addition to his role with CSI, he is part of the editorial team for Future Tense Fiction, a monthly series of short stories about technology, policy, and the future. But his role with the CSI has been particularly fruitful for this endeavor, as it’s brought together scientists, engineers, and technologies to work with writers, artists, and other creative individuals to explore various important scientific and social questions in sci-fi settings. Their work covered existential issues, such as climate change, as well as topics surrounding AI and its societal impacts, how energy sources, advanced computing, and biotechnologies will shape human experiences in the future, and how all these situations throw up new ethical dilemmas for us to grapple with today.  

“Science fiction stories are often really good at getting at what science and technology studies scholars call the ‘techno-social’, which is to say the kind of [overlap] of technological change with social change, with collective decision making, you know, just thinking about how technology is integrated with and then can affect and deform, in some senses, the way that we interact with each other.”

The stories created by this type of collaboration go beyond trying to imagine some unknown invention or discovery and instead explore different situations and contingencies against which broader cultural, philosophical, and social frames can be examined.

“Not that there isn’t a technology in there,” Eschrich added, “There often is like what the science fiction theorist Darko Suvin calls a ‘Novum‘, a sort of new technology that kind of catalyzes change.”

The “Novum” in this context would be the introduction of some sort of world-changing technology or central innovation driving the plot and shaping the society being depicted. Think, for example, of the titular device in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, faster-than-light travel or warp speed in Star Trek and Star Wars, or the power of genetic biology in Jurassic Park. These inventions or processes underpin the logic upon which the narrative functions.

“But also, it’s as much about how people respond to that technology, how we govern and regulate it, and how we integrate it into our lives,” Eschrich explained. “Who’s going to accept it, who’s going to reject it? The stories [we explore] can function as arenas for conversation, and hopefully the narrative makes that more inviting.”

Eschrich and his colleagues at the CSI have worked with some of the biggest sci-fi luminaries and emerging authors, including Margaret Atwood, Ted Chiang, Neal Stephenson, and Kim Stanley Robinson. They have also been supported by and collaborated with various high-profile scientific institutes and organizations, such as NASA, the US National Science Foundation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Google, and Intel Corporation.

So, science and the imagination?

What makes a compelling story? It’s certainly one thing to have a setting or theme that you wish to explore in a story, but that does not mean it will feel realistic to a reader. For that, you need a context that people can relate to. Even the most far-flung human societies will still require depth and complexity to make them believable. That’s important for storytelling in general, but it’s even more important for exploring potential futures. Without a relatable society, community, or social group, any future scenario becomes somewhat anemic as a test ground. Thankfully, the experts who are working with these imagined futures are a motley bunch, drawing from various disciplinary backgrounds, from all the sciences to the humanities and arts.

One particularly valuable contribution to this collective endeavor has come from the social sciences. Where better can you gather insights into how different human societies function across time?

“There’s been a real groundswell in recent years in the sociology of people grappling with the future,” Dr Ash Watson, Scientia Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia, told IFLScience.

Of course, this has been an essential part of the discipline since it first emerged (H.G. Wells played a central role in establishing the Sociological Society in London), but in this context, it has specific value given the complexities the possible futures face.

I think sci-fi has happily been embraced by lots of people for the great potential it offers for us. It helps us think about possibilities and to think critically and imaginatively about the relationship between an imagined future world and the present one that we live in now.

Dr Ash Watson

“Thinking about the kind of path that we might be on as a society, especially with the confluence of all the crises and events that have happened over the past few years, there’s been a real return to these critical questions in social science. This is because the ground that the [current] future seems to be settled on has been unsettled.”

As such, individuals like Watson are using their expertise to imagine the future and to research and talk to people about how the shifting possibilities are impacting them in their everyday lives.

“And that’s a lot of the empirical researchers that I do,” Watson added. “It’s talking to people; it’s running focus groups and observations and finding out basically how [people] live their lives and what matters to them.”

“I think sci-fi has happily been embraced by lots of people, including myself, for the great potential it offers for us. It helps us think about possibilities and to think critically and imaginatively about the relationship between an imagined future world and the present one that we live in now.”

In the past decade, we have faced significant political instability, international conflicts, climate issues, and the pandemic, among other developments. For sociologists, historians, and other academics, these cascading challenges represent a “polycrisis”, where the issues emerging are not independent of one another but are mutually enhancing one another.

“In a context like this, we turn to sci-fi writers who for decades and generations have grappled with the seeds of these kinds of polycrises. And at this moment, where the majority of people around the world are starting to feel the impacts of them in their everyday lives, it makes sense that we turn to this long-standing imaginative resource to ask ‘what’s happening, where are we going, and what does this mean for people?’”

Of course, Watson and others are not suggesting storytelling should replace more traditional forms of scientific practice. Statistics and models all have a role to play in providing us with insights into the world as it is and the world as it may be, but sci-fi narratives offer a complementary approach.

“Sci-fi writers, or speculative fiction writers more broadly, are perhaps our best examples of world builders, because they craft such enormous worlds and in such detail. As a sociologist, what is really interesting about that is that great sci-fi writers show us how to think at multiple registers at the same time,” Watson explained.

“They also know how it would feel for different people to live in a place, and they can only do that so well because they understand, incredibly insightfully, how the current societies that we live in today work and how they feel for different people.”

The future isn’t what it used to be

Throughout her work, Watson has seen certain themes turn up time and time again, even when dealing with very “out there” ideas. I expected this to focus on things like pessimism and fatalism about the future, but actually Watson’s answer was far more encouraging.

“It’s very clear in the research that I’m doing that it all comes back to connections,” she said. “At its core, people want technology to be in service of broadening and deepening their connection with other people, with their loved ones, with all the other people they interact with in their daily lives.”

A participant in one of Watson’s projects wrote a story about robots in care homes. And, at the heart of it, she explained, the story was about the fear that AI and machines would replace care workers. In doing so, the potential for human connection would be stripped from these spaces that are already often underfunded and poorly resourced. Technology in this context could provide technological success, but at the cost of human relationships.

Counterintuitively, students who have turned in what to me are gripping, somewhat terrible accounts of a future I would not like to live in, have said that ‘this really gave me hope for the future.’

Dr Patrick Keys

So, this point about themes that have emerged from this research illustrates what matters to people today. In addition to this, the use of storytelling to approach potential futures also offers people a way to feel more empowered in the present. This was the point Dr Patrick Keys, Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, made when explaining how he not only uses sci-fi settings in his research, but also includes them as a method for teaching.

“I think the agency part is critical,” he explained to IFLScience. “Reading a positive story that somebody else wrote is one thing, but writing one and having to go through the creative process requires a completely different set of mental faculties.”

In this instance, even if the story itself does not meet the desired outcome, the process of creating it nevertheless offers significant value. That’s because the students are required to base their imagined futures on a thorough understanding of existing scientific research. As such, the process of constructing their fictions is informed by real evidence. And by weaving this information into a narrative, the students get to mentally inhabit the future they’re creating.

“Counterintuitively, students who have turned in what to me are gripping, somewhat terrible accounts of a future I would not like to live in, have said that ‘this really gave me hope for the future.’”

This was because, Keys explained, the final product did not necessarily reflect the student’s perspective on what they believed would happen, but was rather a way for them to see that “the future hasn’t been written yet.”

“Just by going through this creative process, they were able to see that there could be many, many different trajectories. There are lots of turning points at every step of the way. It’s never too late.”

Outside the classroom, Keys uses sci-fi for his own research. In 2024, he and colleagues published a study where experts leveraged sci-fi to explore how atmospheric water flows might behave in the future. For instance, how would humans and certain institutions interact when the water cycle is impacted by climate and land use change? Alternatively, how might weather modification activities, like cloud seeding, shift how water is accessed, and what does this mean for wider society?

The idea that sci-fi and imagination can be used as a serious tool in academic research is still emerging. However, increasingly larger numbers of scientists and other scholars are turning to it as a way of understanding and communicating complex ideas on various subjects. But more than that, it makes what can be challenging topics, such as climate change or the further rise of AI systems, more relatable to more people. And, as Keys and others have shown, it can inject into us a sense of agency and hope that we’ve not yet reached the point of no return – the story is still being written.

“The most important take-home point,” Keys added, “is that, if people are to affect change, then this process of creatively interrogating, creatively imagining, and then creatively inhabiting the future, is essential for that work.”