Introduction

Emerging technologies carry the capacity to reshape the world as we currently know it. Their impacts spread across society and surface questions of ethics, economy, ecology, culture, and politics – questions that frequently outrun the expectations of their developers and stretch well beyond their intended use. This entanglement between society and technology forms the core concern of the two fields at the heart of this Special topic: technology assessment (TA) and science fiction (SF). The aim is to render visible a productive convergence between two traditions that, taken together, offer a fuller account of the worlds that are promised to come about by emerging technologies or those worlds that technologies quietly call into being. For this purpose, the following text will give an introduction and offer first remarks to situate the contributions to this Special topic within a larger discourse. It traces SF and TA as complementary modes of engaging with technological futures – and relates why SF is more than just technological inspiration.

Isabella Hermann (2023b) suggests treating SF as a continuum of two different readings. On the left pole, SF operates close to what is scientifically and technically plausible, treating its imagined futures as genuine possibilities. For TA, this perspective offers a culturally-centered view that is often lacking: By focusing on individuals and their psychology, SF stays grounded in lived reality while making explicit or implicit value judgments about the risks, opportunities, and desirability of technical innovations. On the right pole, SF works as social reflection rather than as prospection. Here a fictional future serves to expose fundamental questions and present-day grievances in heightened form. In this way, the dystopian worlds of the cyberpunk genre for example become metaphors for unchecked hyper capitalism rather than scenarios of urban reality or sociotechnical entanglements (Mehnert 2021; Schmeink 2017).

As the contributions for this Special topic oscillate between these poles, this introduction offers a reflective overview to map out the intersection between SF and TA. For this reason, the first part establishes both approaches as future-oriented yet epistemologically distinct. TA pursues positivistic, decision-supporting knowledge through scenarios that emphasize plausibility, comparability, and alternative pathways grounded in present trends. SF, by contrast, builds single, dense, internally consistent imaginary worlds. From there on, three different perspectives on SF are presented: (1) SF as futures exploration; (2) SF as expectation management; (3) SF as cultural reflection.

The introduction concludes that SF deserves recognition as more than a creative method for TA, more than inspiration for tech developers, more than a sophisticated cultural-epistemic practice. It is all of these at once. Situating SF alongside TA means grasping the contexts in which it is used and understood the rich diversity and approaches the genre has to offer. While these perspectives are introduced here, the contributions to this Special topic showcase the versatility of engaging with SF from the vantage point of TA more in depth and offer good practice examples and theoretical foundation.

Between technology assessment and science fiction

SF and TA have different goals and make use of different epistemologies: The former aims to entertain with speculative and sometimes implausible futures, while the latter aims to inform their addressees with sound knowledge based on scientific methods and comprehensible research. What sounds like a contradiction at first holds the potential to complement each other, as Miller points out: “Taken together, the two approaches provide a full picture of the potentials, with some overlap” (Miller 2015, p. 109).

Historically, TA emerged as a scientific and societal response to the disruptive side effects of modern technological progress. While TA has many traditions (Grunwald 2009, p. 1113), its main task is to integrate available knowledge about consequences of emerging technologies early into decision-making, to evaluate technologies from a societal perspective, and to support the resolution of conflicts around technological legitimacy (Grunwald 2009).

SF is the cultural art form that has most consistently developed this mode of consequentialist thinking in creative and often unexpected ways. It does not come as a surprise that the emergence of the genre as a literature art form is dated to the 19^th century, when for the first time in human history, social change and technological progress could be consciously perceived within a single human lifetime (Vint 2021, p. 17). In 1818 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus (Shelley 2024) became known as one of the pioneering works of SF, and one of its most influential, decades before the term ‘science fiction’ was coined. Inspired by the scientific advances of her time, precisely by the work of Luigi Galvani and Erasmus Darwin, her novel tells the story of an artificial, human-like creature assembled from dismembered corpses and brought to life by the imaginary science of the fictional character Victor Frankenstein. Rejected and socially excluded because of its looks, the creature turns to rage and violence, murdering those close to its creator and showcasing an example for how science and technology impact the established social order.

From Shelley’s Frankenstein and Lang’s Metropolis to contemporary writers such as Cory Doctorow, Qiufan Chen, and Larissa Lai, SF continues to create estranged worlds. It is already in the name of the genre that this estrangement is often equated with scientific and technological progress. Darko Suvin, one of the most influential scholars on the study of SF, states that SF is a form of cognitive estrangement – making the familiar appear weird – and “whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment” (Suvin 1972, p. 7). The methodological approach to develop this ‘imaginative framework’ is called ‘worldbuilding’, the deliberate design of an imaginary world (Mehnert 2026). The starting point is a ‘What if?’-question and in answering this question, the imaginary worlds expand in a cascading manner: If X happens, then Y happens, which in turn leads to Z, etc. A process that allows to explore the complex and entangled relation between technologies, society and culture.

Science fiction as futures exploration

Peter von Stackelberg and Alexander McDowell, the set designer of the film Minority Report (Spielberg 2002), refer to worldbuilding as a ‘sandbox’ within which authors explore emerging science and technology. SF understood in this way operates as a form of “narrative technology assessment” (Steinmüller 2016, p. 328): a sociotechnical thought experiment that probes the cultural fit of innovations, as well as their unintended consequences. To pointedly put it in the words of the SF author Frederik Pohl: “A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam” [1] .

This resembles a first parallel to TA: Both activities explore future worlds and address the impact of emerging science and technologies on society and culture. However, where SF uses worldbuilding, TA works with scenarios; often developed to engage with different and diverging alternatives from the present into possible futures (Steinmüller 1997, p. 50). In this context, Grunwald (2014) also refers to the term ‘orientation knowledge’, which is created to make better decisions for the future in the present. Thus, scenarios are intended to help identify strategic options.

Scenarios propose pathways for possible futures (Cuhls et al. 2022) that typically take the form of alternative developments (Steinmüller 1997, p. 52; Pfirrmann and Schmeink 2023). Bishop et al. (2007, p. 14) emphasize that alternatives should help to identify uncertain influencing factors and their impact. Further, it is important that the resulting scenarios are based on plausibility, comprehensibility and comparability in order to support future-oriented strategic decisions. Here, the literature clearly states that TA is following a positivistic understanding of science, meaning that its methods designate to produce comprehensive and objective information on the technology to facilitate the societal commitment of public decision makers (Grunwald 2009, p. 1114).

By comparison, worldbuilding is speculative; it is not focused on what is possible, but on what is imaginable; and unlike the scenario method described above, the emphasis is not on designing alternatives but designing just one world as detailed as possible. The approach does not claim to be a plausible image of the future, but rather sees itself as a space for experimentation and a catalyst for discussion.

The approach has been appropriated by fields like TA or Foresight, as it offers a lifelike perspective. Miles claims that SF could “succeed in highlighting or even identifying issues that plodding academics and planners fail to notice” (Miles 1990, p. 86). Miller calls for including SF stories into the impact assessment of emerging technologies and suggest a new approach she calls extrapolative fiction (Miller 2015). Bina et al. analyze different SF films to provide alternative frames and understandings to address the ‘Grand Societal Challenges’ defined by the EU or to imagine smart cities beyond the engineering discourse (Bina et al. 2017, 2020). SF story writing has also found its way into the training of engineers and developers (Berne and Schummer 2005), and various educational institutions, like the Arizona State University here in this Special topic, use SF as a resource and heuristic for responsible innovation.

This approach to SF remains in a consequentialist perspective and applies a future-oriented reading of the narratives. It seldomly reflects the metaphorical aspect or mediated construction of SF narratives. Instead, SF is treated as expectation of things to come and keeps on shaping our image of the future.

Science fiction as expectation management

Most of the emerging technologies of the last thirty years have arrived pre-loaded with a story. The imaginary worlds skillfully crafted by SF authors make us marvel at the promises and perils of technological progress and prepare our expectations for what might be to come and inspire developers. A frequently cited case appears when Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone, pointed to Star Trek: The Original Series (Roddenberry 1966) as a key source of inspiration: “Suddenly, there was Captain Kirk, talking on his communicator […]. That was not a fantasy to us, although to the rest of the world it was. But to me that was an objective” (Cooper quoted in Jones 2005, 00:13:30).

Science fiction provides imaginaries and normalizes outlandish ideas of the future.

This is often described as the ‘science fiction feedback loop’, a dynamic in which “sci-fi inspires real tech inspires sci-fi inspires real tech” (Bankston 2019, n.p.). Authors such as Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke inspired generations of engineers while simultaneously drawing on the scientific and technological developments of their time. This aligns with an understanding of SF as a mode of science communication. This idea traces back to the early history of the genre, particularly to Hugo Gernsback, who framed the magazine Amazing Stories in 1926 with the programmatic claim: “New inventions pictured for us in the scientification of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow” (Gernsback 2017, p. 12).

SF provides imaginaries and normalizes outlandish ideas of the future. By that, it primes its audience for the otherwise unexpected (Jameson 2005, p. 286). These expectations are strategically harvested and commodified (Mehnert 2023). So tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman the word “her” (Altman 2024) during the presentation of ChatGPT, linking his advanced autocomplete text-system to the fictional artificial intelligence (AI) from the SF film her (Jonze 2014). In particular the technofascist entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for using SF tropes to frame his latest innovation, so is the Tesla car Cybertruck a direct reference to the SF subgenre cyberpunk, especially the film Blade Runner (Schmeink 2019). This strategic use of SF expectations refers to what Taskale calls materialized Science Fiction (2026). In this context, Belsunces (2025; Belsunces and Forlano 2026) refers to ‘sociotechnical fictions’ which are fictional statements about the future, distinct from literary forms, that circulate through technical documents and technoscientific contexts and acquire the status of validated propositions through technoscientific legitimacy. Such fictions are performative, as they participate in the material and political enactment of entities that do not yet exist.

STS scholar Colin Milburn work on ‘nanovisions’ (Milburn 2008) investigates the impact of SF on nanotechnology. He reveals connections between the practices of engineering and the writings of SF authors like Robert A. Heinlein, James Blish, and Theodore Sturgeon. Similarly, Andreas Lösch refers to the study of visions of nanotechnologies and the important of ‘vision assessment’. He points out that the visions echoing SF imaginaries cannot simply be dismissed as marginal motifs as they shape both research policy discourse and the portrayal of nanotechnology in reputable mass media (Lösch 2022).

Technology assessment must stay critically aware of the power of narratives.

These imaginaries are not harmless; they can reinforce biases, perpetuate inequalities, and obscure the experiences of marginalized groups. In big data, for instance, dominant stories about ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’ algorithms often conceal the reality of embedded systemic biases (Nobel 2018). Thus, TA must stay critically aware of the power of narratives.

Science fiction as cultural reflection

“The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. […] All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies” (Le Guin 1976, p. 9).

The SF author Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the author’s role in creating imaginary futures and reminds us that at the end of the day, SF is an art form build from the experience of its creators. The lived experience of an author finds its way into their imagination and thus shapes the imaginary world they create. The cultural and literature scholar Frederic Jameson calls this world-reduction and describes it as “surgical excision of empirical reality in which the multiplicity of what exists is deliberately thinned out” (Jameson 1975, p. 223). With this concept he describes the necessary process by which narratives reduce or condense the complexities of the real world into manageable forms.

SF narratives shape public expectations, guide regulatory priorities, and even influence the design of liability frameworks. For instance, in data privacy regulation, the story of the ‘omniscient algorithm’ versus the ‘empowered data subject’ has influenced both statutory protections and industry self-regulation (Cohen 2018). Insights into SF can shed light on how technostories spread and establish legitimacy, ultimately also shaping regulatory systems.

STS scholar Jennifer Rhee draws on SF for her analysis on the ‘robotic imaginary’. For Rhee, SF becomes a representation of cultural memory and the use of technologies as metaphors for social dynamics (Rhee 2018, p. 17). Going back to the first appearance of the term robot in Karel Čapek’s theatre play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1920 (Čapek 2004) she argues that robot stories echo historical narratives around slavery and race. Likewise argues Hermann that robots and AI in SF examine contemporary social issues, including the human condition, power, inequality, gender, race, and broader sociopolitical anxieties (Hermann 2023a). Hermann warns that taking AI in SF too literally obscures real and urgent ethical topics related to the actual AI like algorithmic bias, data surveillance or copyright infringements to name but a few.

Coming from the field of literature studies, Schmeink investigates the role of SF in framing and grasping emerging bioengineering technologies. In his research on Biopunk (Schmeink 2016), an SF subgenre that is situated at the intersection between biology, genetic engineering, and visions of posthumanism, he presents cohesive insights into how SF artists attribute meaning to this emerging technology and provide imaginaries for biotechnologies of the 21^st century.

Lastly, the extensive work by the philosophers of technology Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal on AI narratives (Cave et al. 2020; Cave and Dihal 2023) explore the different depictions and narratives of AI, how these stories and artefacts attribute meaning to the technology and which culturally shared imaginaries are inscribed into these artefacts.

Following SF scholar Seo-Young Chu (2010) SF has particularly effective means of opening up new perspectives on contemporary issues. She argues that SF draws on elements of the real world that are often abstract or cognitively difficult to apprehend and that SF authors change and transform them into concrete elements inside the imaginary worlds. In this way, a story about a robot rebellion becomes a reflection on workers’ rights. Read in this way, the emerging technologies talked about in SF are neither to be understood as predictions nor engineering inspirations but they become ciphers in Grunwald’s (2012) sense: Like metaphors, they point beyond themselves towards something that originated in the culture of their authors – without fully disclosing what this is.

Articles in the Special topic

SF shapes the discourse on emerging technologies. Tech entrepreneurs appropriate SF narratives to legitimize speculative ventures, engineers adopt fictional neologisms to describe their work, and activists draw from a wealth of creative inspiration to articulate desires for alternative futures. For TA, SF offers different intersections and overlaps to enhance the current methodology and approaches that TA is working with. At the same time, understanding the complex relation between fictional technofutures and the shaping of emerging technology becomes mandatory for TA. As SF narratives are more and more strategically developed, used and reinterpreted to shape the stories of emerging technologies in the present.

This Special topic addresses this vast field of engagement with SF from a TA perspective. The contributions gathered in this volume approach the relationship from a variety of disciplinary and methodological angles. Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves and Wenzel Mehnert open the volume by mapping the conceptual landscape, distinguishing between science fiction, fictional technofutures, and sociotechnical fictions to clarify how different forms of fiction shape the narration of future technologies. Isabella Hermann and Christopher Coenen then take ectogenesis as a case study, examining its portrayal in SF through a hermeneutic technology assessment framework and the reproductive justice framework to illuminate the social fears and hopes surrounding artificial wombs. Nanditha Krishna and Alessandro Ianniello explore speculative fiction as a participatory method, drawing on Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Inayatullah’s ‘futures triangle’ to show how literary analysis can scaffold public co-creation of sociotechnical imaginaries. Will Mason-Wilkes turns to the UK advanced air mobility sector, investigating how SF is mobilized by innovators as both a sensemaking resource and a tool for external communication. Christine Aicardi, Stephen Oram, Zoë Firth, and Helen L. Fisher present a practice-based account of applied science fiction designed to anticipate the sociotechnical and ethical challenges of future digital mental health technologies. Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, and Ruth Wylie contribute a framework of seven science fictional affordances developed at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, illustrating how speculative narratives can enrich technology assessment across a range of projects. Yuan Feng broadens the volume’s geographical horizon by examining Chinese speculative fiction through a Kantian rather than Heideggerian hermeneutics, positioning works by Cixin Liu, Mu Ming, Quifan Chen, and Song Han as non-Western pathways into technology assessment. Sebastian Korenič Tratnik traces the bidirectional relationship between science and SF through the history of the Manhattan Project, analyzing the feedback loop between atomic science and speculative imagination in the work of H. G. Wells and Leo Szilard. The volume closes with an interview with Arne Sönnichsen, in which he argues that SF has long shaped space exploration – from inspiring early rocket engineers to informing contemporary strategic planning – and proposes a ‘Science Fiction Space Lab’ as a practical method for integrating imagination into foresight and technology assessment.