futures
Fiction that called it
Four topics about what comes next — each told twice: by the novel that saw it coming, and by the researchers working on it now.
AI & Agency
Machines that act — and the question of who is still steering.
fictionDaemon / Freedom™ · Daniel Suarez, 2006
nowAgentic systems now execute multi-step real-world tasks; the studied risk is humans gradually ceding control without any single takeover moment.
PARTIALClimate & Adaptation
Heat, water and the engineering nobody agreed to.
fictionTermination Shock · Neal Stephenson, 2021
nowOnly the US and China could deploy planet-scale cooling over other nations' objections; the governance gap is real and unresolved.
HITResources & Power
Rare earths, the Arctic, and who holds the chokepoints.
fictionDune · Frank Herbert, 1965
nowChina is on track to refine ~80% of rare earths by 2035; export controls are already used as leverage; Greenland's deposits are now great-power strategy.
HITBio & Health Futures
Engineered biology — the upside, and the experiments we've agreed not to run.
fictionBlood Music · Greg Bear, 1985
now38 scientists called for restraint on mirror organisms precisely because natural immunity might not stop them; 31 countries convened on it.
EARLYWritten with AI and editorially curated, and always labelled (EU AI Act, Art. 50). Every verdict is defensible: the fiction is real, the sources are current, and we say so when a prediction hasn't landed yet.