Analysts and policymakers increasingly need to consider unprecedented events. Science fiction offers an underutilised but accessible method for exploring and planning for possible futures.
When confronted with frightening possibilities, it’s human nature to recoil, deny the scenario and preserve a sense of comfort in our current view of the world. When improbable situations become reality, it can take some time to wrap our heads around them. A lag in humanity’s comprehension of unprecedented events, as we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic, can lead to inadequate responses.
In strategic contexts, this delay is costly. Thinking through these possibilities in advance could be the difference between crisis and catastrophe. Science fiction could be an unexpected help in this endeavour.
Currently, predictive analysis is the most common tool used to consider different possibilities. This structured process is cognitively demanding and time-consuming, and it requires significant expertise and analytical discipline. Even for those who do have the bandwidth to engage in predictive analysis, cognitive biases and mental shortcuts still shape interpretation. Heuristics – unconscious mental shortcuts that let us judge quickly without weighing every piece of information – can distort this process. The availability heuristic, for instance, skews our sense of an event’s likelihood based on how easily an example of such an event comes to mind – if we can’t think of an example, we’re more likely to dismiss the possibility. And if all our examples are repeats of the same historical precedents or dominant narratives, we will see those futures as more likely and fail to consider novel possibilities.
But humans already have a method for conceptualising unconventional possibilities. Bolstered by the rise of technology in the wake of the industrial revolution, science fiction has long been an outlet for humanity to think about futures no one had previously considered. This became a productive use of imagination: a way to process anxieties about emerging technologies or voice optimism for the futures that science might deliver.
We already have examples of science fiction predicting the future. In 1914, HG Wells’s The World Set Free imagined the use of atomic bombs three decades before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. John Brunner’s 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar conceptualised a unified Europe, China’s rise as a global power and Detroit’s economic decline.
Using science fiction to inform policy isn’t a new concept. Novelists Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were among those who advocated for US president Ronald Reagan to create the missile defence system now known as the Star Wars program. In 2005, the Canadian Army commissioned Karl Schroeder’s Crisis in Zefra, a dramatised future scenario examining how a peacekeeping force might confront a 2025 urban insurgency using drones and modern information systems, not unlike today’s conflict in Ukraine. In 2019, the French Army announced its own team of science-fiction writers tasked with imagining how states and terrorists might exploit future technology. In 2023, the British Ministry of Defence hired science-fiction writers PW Singer and August Cole to write eight short stories on how emerging technologies could shape future warfare. And at ASPI’s 2026 Defence Conference in June, then chief of army Lieutenant General Simon Stuart quoted science-fiction writer William Gibson during a discussion on the role of emerging technologies in deterrence strategy: ‘The future is here today. It’s just not evenly distributed.’
Science fiction provides analytical benefits that directly address common biases in strategic thinking. By presenting unfamiliar worlds and scenarios, it challenges assumptions about how systems must operate, expanding the range of possibilities analysts can consider. It also offsets the availability heuristic: exposure to a wider catalogue of imagined futures means judgements of an event’s likelihood rely less on history or experience. By offering ready-made scenarios, science fiction reduces the cognitive load of exploring unconventional ideas, making the consideration of radically different outcomes a less taxing exercise.
Despite its value, imaginative thinking isn’t always sufficiently rewarded in professional analysis. Suggesting scenarios beyond standard consideration carries reputational risk, and our tolerance for proposing alternative narratives is low. It’s easier to dismiss outlandish suggestions than to genuinely engage with the assumptions they challenge, and this tendency reinforces analytical blind spots. Science fiction offers a lower-risk space in which strategists can explore unconventional possibilities without directly confronting institutional consensus.
As the unpredictability of conflict grows, so does the cost of imaginative failure. Predictive analysis alone can’t keep pace with new threats, and cognitive biases narrow the range of futures we’re willing to consider. Science fiction offers a low-risk, low-cost corrective – one that governments have already used to stress-test assumptions and widen analytical horizons. I’m not suggesting anything as radical as the start of a mandatory reading program for analysts. But maybe we could all benefit from a few more cosy evenings in front of the fire with a good book.
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