Could sci-fi save us all? How the Ministry of Defence is working with sci-fi storytellers to brace Britain for crisis

From AI making life and death decisions, to quantum technology that can predict the future, and wars fought by autonomous machines, a group of sci-fi authors have been dreaming up what could happen over the next century for a very important reason.

Since the very dawn of science fiction, the genre has looked to the future, applying scientific principles to imagine futuristic scenarios, technological advances, social and environmental changes, and life on other planets. But it's not just entertainment. Now, sci-fi is actually being used to brace Britain for a whole host of crises that could come our way in the next 100 years.

That's thanks to The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), an Executive Agency of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), which provides expertise and insight used for "maintaining UK warfighting readiness" in the face of increasing technological advancements.

Dstl uses processes like horizon-scanning (which identifies early warning signals, emerging trends, and potential future threats or opportunities) to prepare the country for the future. In Futures Programme Manager Sarah Herbert's words, "Dstl delivers the science that keeps the UK safe."

"Our job is to give the UK a science and technology edge," she says. "That could be everything from providing expert advice to major defence programs, military operations, horizon-scanning for the future and acting as that bridge between government and industry and academia."

So, Dstl have teamed up with author and researcher Dr Allen Stroud, and other sci-fi authors for the anthology Creative Futures, which imagines some of the future crises we may very well have to deal with, from AI to environmental threats and beyond.

Don't go off and read 1984 and decide that that's how security policy needs to be implemented

Stroud specialises in near science-fiction, stories that takes place about 100 years in the future, and was approached by Dstl in 2022 as then-Chair of the Science Fiction Association.

"We put together discussion groups with science-fiction writers, with people from Dstl and people from MOD coming into those groups, talking with the science fiction writers, and then gradually shaping up a timeline, shaping what we thought would be the things that will happen in the next 100 years, and what they would mean. And so the writers then started to take those ideas and run with them."

Herbert adds: "Futures work can be really, really hard to get your head around, because we're often talking about things that don't exist yet, things that are really high uncertainty. So sci-fi and storytelling are really great tools for Futures, because it really helps people picture what the world might look like and get into the right mindset and think about the actions we may need now and prepare for."

But how did they even begin to think about what may happen in the future?

"There were six discussions, based on five different subject areas," Stroud explains. "You had a selection of writers at each discussion - so you had three writers at the Energy discussion, three writers at the Human Development discussion, three writers at Law and Justice and so on.

"We structured the topics into different subject areas, and we then had three writers, but everybody had access to all the information, and each of the discussions was begun with an introductory presentation.

"Then there was a reading list [pulled from the publicly-available government document Global Strategic Trends], consisting of material that was based on everything that we had in the particular area that we were looking at. Then from the discussion, we built a timeline, and we built a geographical representation."

And the result of these discussions? Some absolutely terrifying stories about what could happen in the next 100 years.

As for which stories from the anthology he found most striking, Stroud says: "Probably 100 kilos of gold being loaded into an orbital weapons platform and fired into London, thereby destroying the city because somebody had the bright idea of doing orbital mining and firing said kilograms of gold into the Sahara Desert!

"It's quite an obvious cautionary tale, but it was based on some discussions that weren't just happening in the project, they were happening elsewhere as well, so it was quite interesting to see Stuart Hodson dramatise that.

"The first piece I wrote was Lay Down Your Burdens, which is the AI that brings peace to a war, that could be Ukraine and Russia but isn't, but by lying to both sides and scheming against both sides, because its priority was to bring peace, not to obey any kind of ethical framework... I just thought as a writer, it was something interesting to write about, to give people something to think about as an ethical dilemma of our use of AI."

Stroud points out: "The science-fiction writers had to write within a parameter that was specific in terms of its time area, and that was accuracy adjacent. What we mean by that is that if you're going to write about a specific set of events, then write about them in such a way as that they are applicable in multiple contexts.

"So the future may not happen exactly as you've specified in the story, but the lessons that are learned, the ideas that are communicated, the thoughts that are there, are applicable in a multitude of contexts."

Herbert says: "I think what those stories do is raise the right questions about [things] like quantum technology - like what happens if both sides have the same technology advantage and you get cancelled out on creating new tactics? These stories really aren't there to try and predict the future, but explore those alternative futures to help us think beyond our limitations."

There are already examples of these processes successfully predicting the future, too.

"We were looking at Venezuela in 2022," Stroud explains. "If you look at the pattern of fossil fuel resources, it's quite obvious that Venezuela is an area of untapped oil and gas. We'd identified that, as resources become scarcer, maybe there will be issues there, and there could be an element of destabilisation.

"We didn't predict [exactly] what would happen, but we'd identified that and we'd identified a few other things that were going on, because we had the time to sit and talk about them and think about them."

However, he emphasises: "The methods that we've used in Creative Futures are not designed to replace any statistical methods. They are designed to support statistical methods. You take decisions based on probability and based on data.

"But then, if you want to understand some of the ramifications around taking those decisions, you ask a science-fiction writer to think about it, and then they will invent characters and write a story about somebody caught up in the consequences of that decision."

He warns: "What I don't want people to do is go and read a load of fiction books and decide that's how we need to [proceed]. Don't go off and read 1984 and decide that that's how security policy needs to be implemented for the next few decades!"

Stroud also points out that sci-fi writers have a responsibility to their audiences in how they write about potential future crises - for example, resisting the urge to lazily paint AI as a global, sentient entity that's going to destroy our society.

We're all on the side of trying to make humanity better

Sharing some on-screen sci-fi stories he's inspired by, he said: "The Expanse paints an interesting picture of the near future exploration of the solar system. Foundation is a great re-imagination of Isaac Asimov's writings with a modern aesthetic. For All Mankind is an interesting alternative timeline which is echoing current events.

"A slightly controversial view - I like HBO's Westworld when it leaves Westworld and becomes more about the society people live in. There are uses of AI for future prediction in that as well."

So, with all this in mind, could sci-fi actually save us from future threats? It's not completely out of the realms of possibility.

Herbert says: "If someone found something, and they created a really good story and they got a senior decision maker's attention to do something now, then there's a possibility."

Stroud adds: "If you're a policy maker, if you're in an active moment of responsibility where you're making decisions that affect lots of people's lives, if you have information that gives you stats about the impact of what you're going to do, and then you also have something that describes a person who will be in that moment and how they will be affected....

"Say it's flooding. If you've got the statistics about what the intervention would do to preserve a particular town, and then you have a kind of a story illustration of it, at the end of the day, when you make that decision, what empowers your decision-making is going to be whatever information you have to hand. If it's a story that gives you a sense of the difference you're going to make to people's lives, or it's the numbers, it doesn't matter, as long as they support each other."

So, as global politics becomes increasingly turbulent and the natural environment continues to degrade, especially when we look towards the future, is there room for optimism? Stroud thinks so, for one crucial reason.

"In general, we're all on the side of trying to make humanity better, and that's certainly in the Creative Futures project," he says.

"That was something that we all agreed on, no matter what background we came from, whether it was military, whether it wasn't military, whether it was one political side, another political side. We were all on the side of trying to make humanity better."

Creative Futures (Beyond and Within) is available to buy now.

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