How better to solve the planets ills than by swapping all the names and changing things for the better?
It’s an attractive fantasy, and sometimes an informative one. As a species, we have thrived by planning ahead, by anticipating problems and solving them before or as they occur. This is what separates us from the apes. Speculative fiction seems to me to be the only genre that allows us to truly explore what might have been or what might yet come. Many of the events waiting for us–longevity, environmental collapse, cloning, water wars, artificial intelligence, global disease and more–have been explored by science fiction already, so the territory is not entirely unfamiliar. Just as science fiction paved the way for the space and race and the IT industry, so too will it help ease our way into whatever future awaits us today. SF can’t show us everything that’s to come, but it can at least ask the questions.
