The Amazing Century: 1926-2026: How Science Fiction has shifted from thrilling adventure to strategic imperative

Ezri Carlebach:

Part Two: How science fiction has shifted from thrilling adventure to strategic imperative

In Part One, we looked at the origins and influence of science fiction, not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a repository of insights for coping with today’s technology-driven world. Since then, a core science fiction theme – the ‘AI apocalypse’ narrative – has surged in mainstream news, and it’s much worse than just losing your job. But it’s not all doom and gloom, as I found out from speaking to the leaders of two imagination-driven organizations.

In August, three news stories highlighted serious problems with AI – psychologists identified ‘AI psychosis’ as a new mental health condition; the parents of a teenage boy who tragically took his own life sued OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT encouraged his suicide; and Anthropic published an updated user policy for Claude, to stop people using it to build chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It seems our interactions with innocent-sounding ‘chat-bots’ can lead to dire consequences, from mental breakdown to death and mass destruction.

My point is not to encourage fear, nor to advocate against emerging technologies. On the contrary, I believe in the potential for good in AI, biotech and space exploration, all products of our ability to imagine things that don’t yet exist. Ironically, the cause of emerging technology’s worst consequences is a lack of imagination in its application and governance.

Frankenstein and the consequences

Perhaps the enduring impact of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, more than 200 years after it was first published, is enough to demonstrate the power of the speculative imagination. Apart from inspiring countless reworkings on page, stage and screen (Guillermo Del Torro’s new film version is about to be released as I write), Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece confronts us with the fundamental problem of technological advance: Which is the real danger… inventor or invention?

It could be argued that Frankenstein’s dark themes and tragic outcomes set the tone for works of speculative imagination ever since, particularly when that imagination turns to the future. Just think of all the novels and movies about nuclear annihilation, biological and environmental disaster, invasion by aliens, or subjugation by robots and cyborgs – in other words, artificial humans who turn against their creators. So, back to Frankenstein. 

The sense of an inevitably dystopian future may originate deep in our psyche, in the knowledge that, eventually, we all die. But it’s also a product of the decisions we make, how we make them, and what – if any – mechanisms exist to change course when things go wrong. As Eva Horn puts it in her 2018 study The Future As Catastrophe, “modernity’s optimism in anticipating and planning the future has – from its onset – been contradicted by a fictional ‘what if?’ pointing out all the dangers and contingencies”. 

For organizations facing increasingly complex, and potentially dangerous, twenty-first century technologies, the fictional ‘what if?’ – the applied imagination – has become a strategic imperative. But applied imagination isn’t just anticipating the worst. To illustrate this, I’ll introduce two real-world projects, led by pioneering women: Get with the Program, a social enterprise that brings schools and businesses together to introduce children to the potential of technology; and, first, Edinburgh University’s Imagination Lab, a dynamic network reimagining research and education by exploring the potential of imagination at the cross-roads of art and technology.

The Imagination Lab

In establishing The Imagination Lab as part of the Business School at Edinburgh University, Piera Morlacchi – Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Head of the Business School’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group – set out to ignite the collective imagination. “We all have imagination,” she told me, “but we can do better”. The Imagination Lab is a vibrant hub not only for academics, but also for the artists, technologists, creatives and entrepreneurs it partners with. Within this inter-disciplinary setting, Piera argues for the distinctive role of imagination. “When I talk about imagination, some of my colleagues say, ‘yeah, creativity, innovation, it’s all more or less the same’. Actually, for me, it’s not. Imagination is the power, the engine of creativity and innovation.” 

Piera created a new course called AI, Imagination and Creativity that will be delivered next year as part of Edinburgh’s upcoming AI for Business master’s degree. She works with businesses, business organizations and creative industries, involving them in the course and addressing them as potential adopters of what she calls “the more transformative use of imagination”. For example, in a project with a Scottish company Piera asked, “what everyday imagination looks like, in terms of how people do things in their business”. They started out with a conventional view of imagination as a non-business issue (“something you do at the weekend”, as one employee put it), but soon grasped the value of using imaginative strategies to think differently about the future. “In some cases they have a really transformative experience, they change how they act in the present in terms of doing their work.”

We tend to think of imagination as the preserve of the individual, based on romantic notions of the solitary creative type. Working with organizations requires breaking free of these stereotypes. “Individual imagination is very important,” Piera notes, “but collective imagination and collective imaginative capacity in terms of a company or organization, I think that is where we need to put a lot of energy and focus”. Mindful of dystopian fears, she stresses the importance of moral imagination. “Imagination is also the capability to come up with a way of thinking differently about our values… I did some work on humanitarian use of drones, but as a military technology they have completely different consequences.” 

Needless to say, Piera is inspired by science fiction. “As I grew up, my favourite science fiction author was Ursula le Guin. As an engineer, her definition of technology as the interface between us and the material world is the best definition I can think of.” 

Get with the Program

“Science fiction has always fascinated me,” agrees Jeni Trice, CEO, Founder and Chief Coding Adventurer at Get with the Program, “and not only for the storytelling. It can give the reader an opportunity to take a view of ‘alien’ nature, whilst actually reflecting on human nature, but also affords an opportunity for invention, for creating thought experiments and what ifs”.

Providing a safe space for ideas beyond the constraining boundaries of ‘reality’ appeals to Jeni. “It’s something we build into our coding adventures at Get with the Program, asking students to ‘program’ each other as a robot, without being limited by the complexities of how a humanoid robot simply stands or takes a step. We follow that by asking ‘what would you program your robot to do as a celebration, if you could?’ This allows students, aged 5 to 14, to let their creative imaginations run free. One group of 8-year-old girls were writing instructions for their robot to dance the Macarena before I’d even finished explaining the challenge!”

Get with the Program’s coding adventures are delivered via fun video shows with follow-on activities. These help engage students in basic technology concepts, using theme-based theatre-in-education methods and presenting inclusive role-models. “They introduce key computing terms,” Jeni explains, “while also encouraging the recognition that computing and technology are, in fact, exciting opportunities to develop creative skills, to design and imagine new ideas and possibilities”.

It’s not only the children who are creatively inspired. “The adults find they too are learning new concepts, and are inspired by this to create new teaching content,” says Jeni, highlighting the positive impact of positioning imagination as a skill rather than a distraction. Jeni believes businesses can learn a lot from the imaginative and creative approach of her team. For example, acting something out physically, like the children do in the coding adventures, can help simplify or clarify an issue, or fire up a team’s creative juices. “Also, learning doesn’t need to be top down,” Jeni observes. “This can be reflected in a business setting by empowering less experienced employees to share ideas based on an imaginative approach, while also quietly coaching more experienced or senior people to give themselves permission to be imaginative.”

Jeni sees the joy of encouraging schoolchildren to find creative inspiration as a hugely fulfilling opportunity, particularly the chance to spend time positively supporting students from diverse backgrounds. And, like Piera at The Imagination Lab, Jeni is actively looking for businesses and individuals from the business community to support their important work, and to gain the benefits of applied imagination for themselves and their organizations.

You can get involved: All it takes is a little imagination

Sign up a primary school near you now for Get with the Program’s free Civil Aviation Authority-funded Moon Landing Coding Adventure (to be run before March 2026): www.getwiththeprogram.org.uk/reach-for-the-sky or contact Jeni directly at getintouch@getwiththeprogram.org.uk for more details.

Find out more about The Imagination Lab’s ground-breaking work at

www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/research/areas/entrepreneurship-innovation/imagination-lab and contact Piera directly at piera.morlacchi@ed.ac.uk.

The concluding article in this series celebrating science fiction and its role in creating the modern world will appear in April 2026, to coincide with the centenary of the first SF magazine, Amazing Stories. In Part Three I will show how incredibly accurate some of the wildest science fiction of the 1960s and ‘70s turned out to be in depicting everyday life today. At the same time, I will debunk the myth of prediction… if you want to know more in the meantime, drop me a line at ezri@spacecitybreakout.com – until then, live long and prosper! 🖖

Written by: Editor