Imagining the future

This week, Annie Jacobsen, the author of the bestselling ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ released her new book, ‘Biological War: A Scenario’. What can we say, the woman’s found her niche.

The tome examines what might happen if an engineered pathogen escaped from a Russian lab in Obolensk. We haven’t finished it yet, but suffice to say, it’s not a fairytale. No spoilers, but mass casualties, martial law, and the general collapse of civilisation play prominent roles. 

Such attempts to map out worse case scenarios aren’t new. They tap into our morbid curiosity and as such, generally sell pretty well. Doomsday isn’t just a clock or an upcoming Marvel movie - it’s an entire genre. 

But it’s usually been part of a broader imagining of our future. Dystopian wastelands have their place, but so do utopian panaceas. Peace, exploration, and a graduation from an age of war and disagreement were put forward alongside painful destruction.

That’s changing. Modern science fiction either borrows heavily from the past in terms of aesthetics (like Severence) or tells the story of humanity forced to turn back the clock (The Last of Us). Even those shows that cast far forward (or far far away) are focused on prequels that do not require imagination beyond what has gone before.

This isn’t just happening on screens. In our politics, we’re largely forced to choose between careful management of the present or promises of a return to a distorted past, between Angus Taylor on Kitchen Cabinet or Pauline Hanson at Dolce & Gabbana. Bring on the biological war.

Without a positive future to strive for, The Guardian recently defined our current age as ‘decadence without pleasure’. We have access to things that generations ago would have felt impossible, and yet none of it is making us happy.

For anyone looking to define the future, they first have to imagine it. Preferably without an apocalyptical scenario.