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What if reality—our world today—could draw from the fantastical or terrifying futures science fiction authors imagine and use those scenarios to put us on the right path?That's the idea behind a new Science Fiction Advisory Council, that's recruited a long list of award-winning science fiction writers and filmmakers, including The Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood and The Martian author Andy Weir, to influence real world policies and ultimately bring about positive change in the world.The Science Fiction Advisory Council, with some 64 advisors in total, will apparently help create future roadmaps across sectors like the environment, energy, health, and civil society. It's the creation of XPRIZE and Japan's ANA airline.It's an admirable idea, for sure. Science fiction is often credited with being eerily accurate when predicting future societies. One needs merely to utter "1984" to conjure up images of our surveillance society; and it's no coincidence feminist stalwart The Handmaid's Tale is now a hit TV show in an age when America's leader is shaving away women's rights one legislation at a time.Details on the Council as a whole have not been published yet, but in a media statement the Council said the advisors will participate in quarterly virtual and in-person meetings.The Council's first project will also involve stories written by the members, told from the perspectives of passengers on a fictional flight from Tokyo to San Francisco who mysteriously find themselves transported 20 years in the future.So, here's to the future. While utopian science fiction futures are few and far between, let's hope that by putting their heads together some of today's best thinkers can help as avert disaster in whichever form it may come.Subscribe to Science Solved It, Motherboard's new show about the greatest mysteries that were solved by science.
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