Science fiction for hire? Notes towards an emerging practice of creative futurism

Abstract

This article introduces the term creative futurism to distinguish a type of speculative writing from traditional creative writing practices, specifically those of science fiction. Creative futurism is not a clearly defined field or method of practice but rather a loose array of approaches, examples and contexts, often involving collaborations between writers and stakeholders from other fields. We define it as work which is futures-oriented, uses elements of the traditional creative writing skillset, but is constrained by an additional set of parameters (their purpose, context and requirements). To support this definition, science fiction author Joanne Anderton discusses her experience writing creative, near-future scenarios about the deployment of drones for Trusted Autonomous Systems (a kind of creative futurism in practice). She outlines how she and her stakeholders conceptualised the writing and how she applied traditional creative writing skills within this context. Building upon this, author and critic Kathleen Jennings identifies aesthetic features of traditionally published examples of creative futurism: its heightened focus on technology, its realist-rationalist tone, and the resulting subordination of other aspects of craft such as characterisation. We conclude by discussing aspects of writing practice that might be applied in the future to energise this new form of writing.