Writing About the Future

One of the problems about predicting the future in science-fiction writing, especially the not-to-distant future, is keeping the science right. In my stories about climate change, it is all too easy to stage them with today’s current culture. Things, however, are never so simple. Right now, in addition to following the latest about climate change, I’m also following the developments in A.I. and robotics. These are two fields that seem to be evolving at breakneck speed. There are many who say, particularly in regard to A.I., that we are at the beginning of an apocalypse. I don’t believe so.

A few years ago, a magazine I read, Popular Science, I believe, had an article about how accurate their predictions were. Every year for the past fifty or so years, they made predictions of what life would be like in twenty years based on the science of that day. The article concluded that they were mostly wrong. Some things that they predicted never came to pass – like personal flying packs – while other things became common with no hint from twenty years ago – like cell phones.

In my vignettes and stories, I’ve tried to incorporate some advances in A.I. and robotics that I believe will be common thirty years from now. Hopefully, this adds additional depth to my stories.