Science Fiction, Fact and Forecast

Scenarios are a crucial tool in philosophy and the sciences, in technology assessment, design and engineering as well as in management. Fictional texts that sketch alternate societies and possible future developments are systematically written and interpreted in order to anticipate change and discover possible courses of action. For such purposes, these texts are based on scientific paradigms and start their exploration from real-world conditions. The research project Science Fiction, Fact & Forecast will highlight the history and the problematic definition of scenarios as well as their different understandings and applications. To thoroughly investigate this functional storytelling, the term scenario thinking will be defined as an overarching concept. The underlying thesis of the project is that scenarios increasingly assume literary shapes. Set in the general milieu of literary theory, philosophy of science, and cultural history, the main part of the project consists of a comparative analysis of scenario thinking and Science Fiction literature regarding motifs, narrative strategies, and methods of extrapolation. In this framework the project addresses the question, what can literature express when pragmatic thought experiments fall short. As will be pointed out, there is a growing trend for bringing together science and literature especially Science Fiction for purposes of futurology. Against this background, literary theory gains in importance for the understanding of contemporary scenario thinking. Despite the prevalence of scenarios in various fields, there are very few publications on the topic and so a systematic overview of the applications and methodologies of scenarios can be identified as a desideratum. The first part of this project will fill this research gap by presenting a cultural history of scenario thinking. Further, the research fields epistemology of literature and genre theory will help to investigate the nature of these scenarios and their epistemological claims. On this basis, the contemporary forms of scenario thinking will be examined, focusing on three case studies: Science Fiction Prototyping, Design Fiction and contemporary Scientific Novels. Committed to a socio-critical framework, this study concludes with suggestions for a revision of scenario thinking, based on positions that question a nave understanding of fictionality and are critical of a mere future-driven perspective. Science Fiction, Fact & Forecast will thus contribute to a conceptualization and a critical inventory of scenario thinking, as well as to debates in contemporary Science Fiction studies.

Science Fiction, Fact & Forecast investigated the growing trend for bringing together science and literature - especially Science Fiction (SF) - for purposes of futurology and, more generally, how this is connected to what could be called a "speculative turn" in contemporary cultural studies and philosophy. The project started from an investigation into the vocabulary and the methodology of "scenario thinking". In the framework of said trend, the text form "scenario", which is a crucial tool for futurists, is often compared to and intermingled with literary texts that are attributed to the genre SF. Focusing on this aspect, a text corpus of approximately one hundred short stories that were written or interpreted in some sort of futurological framework, e.g. with the method of Science Fiction Prototyping, in Design Fiction processes or in the context of Speculative Fiction workshops and anthologies, has been defined and analyzed. The project's goal was to show how contemporary futurology interacts with SF texts and the SF community, what practices and infrastructures are employed in this exchange and if it makes sense to talk of these short stories as "scenarios". In order to answer these questions, it was necessary to go beyond the text analysis and exchange with people who work at the intersection of SF and futurology, who, e.g., facilitate writing workshops or publish beforementioned anthologies. A research trip to the Center for Science and the Imagination at the Arizona State University and the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego provided valuable insight into the overall goals and the methods of projects like the Climate Fiction short story contest "Everything Change" or "Project Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future". The question of how scenarios and literary storytelling relate and what kind of stories can help us to think about different futures, has hit a nerve - many invitations to talk and write about the nature of a "speculative turn" and the role of SF in thinking about the future followed. Therefore, besides the research focus on this specific text corpus and said institutions, which guided many of my conference papers and articles, the insights of Science Fiction, Fact & Forecast have fed into numerous popular articles, workshops, radio broadcasts and interviews. The turn that this research project took clearly shows that SF has not only become more popular, but that it is also increasingly taken seriously when it comes thinking about the future and assessing different possible futures. As Science Fiction, Fact & Forecast showed, SF is not at tool to predict the future, but the literary dimension and the famous quirkiness and eccentricity of Science Fiction facilitates a careful and tentative scanning of possible futures.