Go ahead, dream about the future

Every science fiction writer has a story
about a time when the future arrived

too soon.

I have a lot of those stories.

Like, OK, for example,

years ago I was writing a story
where the government

starts using drones to kill people.

I thought that this was
a really intense, futuristic idea,

but by the time the story was published,

the government was already
using drones to kill people.

Our world is changing so fast,

and there's a kind
of accelerating feedback loop

where technological change
and social change feed on each other.

When I was a kid in the 1980s,

we knew what the future
was going to look like.

It was going to be some version
of Judge Dredd or Blade Runner.

It was going to be neon megacities
and flying vehicles.

But now, nobody knows
what the world is going to look like

even in just a couple years,

and there are so many scary apparitions
lurking on the horizon.

From climate catastrophe
to authoritarianism,

everyone is obsessed with apocalypses,

even though the world ends
all the time and we keep going.

Don't be afraid to think about the future,
to dream about the future,

to write about the future.

I've found it really liberating
and fun to do that.

It's a way of vaccinating yourself

against the worst possible case
of future shock.

It's also a source of empowerment,

because you cannot prepare for something
that you haven't already visualized.

But there's something
that you need to know.

You don't predict the future,

you imagine the future.

So as a science fiction writer

whose stories often take place
years or even centuries from now,

I've found that people are really hungry
for visions of the future

that are both colorful and lived in,

but I found that research on its own
is not enough to get me there.

Instead, I use a mixture
of active dreaming

and awareness of cutting-edge trends
in science and technology

and also an insight into human history.

I think a lot about what
I know of human nature,

and the way that people have responded in the past to huge changes and upheavals and transformations. And I pair that with an attention to detail, because the details are where we live. We tell the story of our world through the tools we create and the spaces that we live in. And at this point, it's helpful to know a couple of terms that science fiction writers use all of the time: future history and second order effects. Now, future history is basically just what it sounds like. It is a chronology of things that haven't happened yet, like Robert A. Heinlein's famous story cycle, which came with a detailed chart of upcoming events going up into the year 2100, or, for my most recent novel, I came up with a really complicated timeline that goes all the way to the 33rd century and ends with people living on another planet. Meanwhile, a second order effect is basically the kind of thing that happens after the consequences of a new technology or a huge change. There's a saying often attributed to writer and editor Frederik Pohl that a good science fiction story should predict not just the invention of the automobile but also the traffic jam. And speaking of traffic jams, I spent a lot of time trying to picture the city of the future. What's it like? What's it made of? Who's it for? I try to picture a green city with vertical farms and structures that are partially grown rather than built, and walkways instead of streets, because nobody gets around by car anymore, a city that lives and breathes. And, you know, I kind of start by daydreaming the wildest stuff that I can possibly come up with, and then I go back into research mode, and I try to make it as plausible as I can by looking at a mixture of urban futurism, design porn, and technological speculation, and then I go back and I try to imagine what it would actually be like to actually be inside that city.