Fictional worlds which differ from our own because of some scientific or pseudo-scientific rationale are basically the definition of science fiction. After all, SF stories have all kinds of plots, all kinds of characters, all kinds of themes, but they all take place in a "science fiction world." Sometimes that's as simple as "the modern day, but with aliens invading," and sometimes it's as complex as Dune's distant future empire.
Future Earths: One keystone of SF worldbuilding is creating plausible future societies. As any study of the history of SF indicates, this is actually very difficult. Pretty much any future society as depicted more than about 20 years ago seems ridiculous to modern audiences. To actually predict the future of Earth would obviously require a complete understanding of contemporary Earth, and nobody has that, either. Even professional analysts who get paid to forecast the next few years for governments and businesses have a mediocre record at best. If you can do better, you're in the wrong line of work writing fiction.
Most future worldbuilding in SF tends to take the approach of assuming one particular current trend will continue or increase, and show the effects of that. Often it is taken to an absurd level deliberately, so that the story can serve as a dire warning about what we shouldn't be doing. This gives you stories like The Space Merchants or Make Room, Make Room! (aka Soylent Green). The author takes a negative trend, extrapolates it into the future with no countervailing influences, and there's your dystopian future!
I think one reason the Cyberpunk school of SF made such a huge splash in the 1980s and 1990s was simply that it wasn't based on dire warnings. William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors seemed genuinely interested in depicting the "real" future rather than writing polemics.
A contrary approach is to look at history as cyclical. We're in a "Progressive" and globalizing era now? Assume 2030 will be conservative and nationalistic. Religion is on the wane in the West? Assume another "Great Awakening" of faith. This is a good way to show some contrast and perspective on current attitudes — but sadly a lot of contemporary readers may view your forecast as advocacy, and attack you for not having those current attitudes.
The big trick to creating future societies isn't actually predicting the future, it's persuading the audience that this is a plausible future. Which is one reason older futures seem so unconvincing: they were written for a different audience. Tastes and assumptions change.
So, how do you do it? How do you make a plausible future? You know what I'm going to say: do your research.
Look at population trends. I'm a little annoyed by the writers and moviemakers who still trot out the "overpopulated dystopian future" trope when in the real world, people who get paid to forecast future trends for government and business are warning about underpopulation in large parts of the developed world. China and Russia are set to halve in population over the next half-century. Japan and Europe are nearly in the same boat. Will those trends continue? We don't know. But any plausible future Earth should include a billion Africans and half-empty ghost cities in Europe and Asia.
Look at economics. One of the greatest accomplishments in human history happened quietly in the 1990s and early 2000s as a billion people in the poorest parts of the world gained middle-class incomes and lifestyles. This will have knock-on effects, including some nobody will predict. But it's definitely a game-changer.
Look at technology. Not just the marketing press releases rewritten as "technology news" about next year's cell phones or self-driving cars, but actual fundamental changes in tech. If Elon Musk's "Starship" can cut orbital launch costs tenfold (he claims a hundredfold, but I doubt it), then all sorts of things which were impossible suddenly become feasible. If cheap and clean power from fusion ever stops being "ten years away" we'll see a very different world.
And when you've done all that research, think it through. Consider how these changes will affect people's lives and attitudes. For example, SF writers predicted videophones and wrist phones or pocket phones since the 1940s — but who envisioned the social effects? Video of an arrest sparking riots, Ukrainians using their phones to track an invasion in real time, a weird culture of alienation and exhibitionism on social media, all from mobile phones with cameras in them.
Obviously you can't really predict the future, and your predictions are probably going to be wrong. (I wrote a whole essay about how lousy SF writers are at predicting things.) But you should at least try, so that your reader will come away with the feeling that your future world is solid, not cardboard.
Here are some useful resources for info and speculation about future politics, economics, and technology:
Army Mad Scientist Blog: this is a great site run by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. They spend a lot of time thinking about future military issues and technology. https://madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil
Army Table of Future Technologies: taken from the Mad Scientist Blog, this is a footnoted table of future military tech, organized by how far out it is in time. The embedded links lead to other sites of interest. You can download it here: https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/mad-scientist/b/weblog/posts/table-of-future-technologies
Imperial College London Table of Disruptive Technologies: a listing of new technologies, organized by how disruptive they may be and how soon they may appear. The notes are a little vague sometimes, but they do give one a direction for research. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/enterprise-office/public/Table-of-Disruptive-Technologies.pdf
Isaac Arthur: Mr. Arthur runs an excellent YouTube channel about science and futurism. The main focus is on space exploration and colonization, but over the years he's touched on all sorts of topics. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts: This is a round-up of research NASA's been sponsoring on cool stuff. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/NIAC_funded_studies.html
National Space Society Roadmap to Space Settlement: A step-by-step plan to colonize the Solar System, with nice listings of what technology is needed for each step. https://space.nss.org/nss-roadmap-to-space-settlement-3rd-edition-2018-contents/
Stratfor: this is a for-profit think tank with loads of good material. They do charge for their reports, so you either have to buy a subscription or make friends with someone who already has one. https://worldview.stratfor.com
Winchell Chung: This series I'm writing is going to make a lot of references to Mr. Chung's famous "Atomic Rockets" Web site, which has expanded over the years to cover a staggering variety of topics. Here's his page about future histories: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/futurehistory.php#id--Predicting_the_Future
Next time: The Stars.
Heh. My favorite Atomic Rockets were those used to export Uranium metal from [name of planet], in Charlie Stross's classic "Neptune's Brood". The crew were Young Communist squids! And the rockets were pretty safe: failure rate was under 2%, if memory serves: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1669257807
Posted by: Peter Tillman | 06/13/2022 at 07:09 PM