Fiction and Future Imaginations

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Fiction and Future Imaginations

We do not live by facts alone

(Note: I’ve written and rewritten this first section countless times, choosing my words carefully in an attempt to fully express myself. Reading back, I realise it is more direct than I usually write. But honestly, I do not know how else to say it.)

Sometimes reality becomes so brutal that it exceeds our ability to process it in ordinary language.

That was how I felt after watching American Doctor at Movies that Matter in The Hague last week. The documentary left me less shocked, a sad reality of our times, yet more heartbroken, angry, and a little dazed for days that followed. It confronted me with realities I will never be able to unsee, it honed my awareness of the systematic brutality it documented, and it just got under my skin in a way I simply couldn’t shake off.

Although I believe it is a necessary and much needed film, after watching it, the last thing I needed was more reality.

I needed fiction.

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After watching it, the last thing I needed was more reality. I needed fiction.

Gregg the Artivist

I don’t say this because I wanted to look away, or because I wanted distraction. But because I really, honestly, needed somewhere for my grief, exhaustion, and anger to go without turning into hopelessness. And this is not for some false comfort. I just needed enough of whatever, to stand back up in a world that, for a moment, felt almost impossible to face.

A couple of hours after the movie, I saw a post going around online. Not something new, I’ve seen it before and you may will have also. The post is of a sign in a bookshop window that reads: “Please note: The post apocalyptical fiction section has been moved to Current Affairs.”

It gives me a small chuff every time. But this time it made me stop.

Because the joke lands a little too well.

We do not live by facts alone

When I first started Gregg the Artivist and began speaking about climate with people outside of related sectors, like my family, friends, or my local community, it quickly became clear that despite decades of hearing the jargon, many people still did not understand the basic science.

And at first this kind of annoyed me. But afterwards I realised, how could they?

For those of us lucky enough to be sitting in relatively comfortable and unaffected places, there was still the privilege of being able to ask if climate change was even real. Something that never ceased to astound me. Especially because there were already people living through trauma, grief, displacement, and death.

Still, I believed people had the right to know. The right to understand. In hindsight, somewhat foolishly, I thought I could share what I had learnt and was learning and people would want to hear it. After all, this is everyone’s future we are talking about.

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Facts alone do not help us live inside what they reveal.

Gregg the Artivist

I tied those messages to my art. I thought I could create work that represented my concerns, understandings of the problem, then use my videos, website, and socials to show the process behind it while also explaining the why. The facts. The science. What people needed to know.

What I got back was mostly two kinds of response. One group wanted more art and less explanation. The other were denialists. I kid you not.

And in a way, I had arrived too late.

By then, the news cycle had already turned climate into spectacle, throwing around jargon without helping people understand the deeper why. At the same time, fossil fuel interests had spent years ‘muddying the water’ with misinformation, disinformation, and outright denial. Add in the endless greenwashing (or performance I like to think of it) from corporations, politicians, brands, and institutions, many people rightly, no longer trusted what they were hearing.

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We do not only need facts to survive unstable times. We need stories that help us stay human inside them.

Gregg the Artivist

After a year, most of the responses I got were attacks. I dreaded opening the comments section on my work. People told me I was a fool. That I was spreading conspiracy. Some even went as far as sending me huge documents of so called proof that the climate crisis was a hoax.

And still, I could not give up on the belief that facts matter. They do, of course… and maybe even more desperately than I realised at the time.

But I also learnt something else. Facts alone do not help us live inside what they reveal. We do not only need facts to survive unstable times. We need stories that help us stay human inside them.

Why science fiction and horror matter now

Maybe that is part of why fiction matters so much right now. Especially for me, science fiction. And especially horror. This probably sounds like a weird statement, but indulge me for a moment here.

It is not because they help us avoid reality, but because the more I pay attention to these genres, the more I realise they help us approach reality from another angle. They let us sit with fear, collapse, ethics, survival, and possibility in ways that ordinary public language often cannot. They create space for questions that news cycles and political talking points rarely allow or answer.

Science fiction matters because it stretches the horizon.

It asks what kind of future we are building, who gets to shape it, and what kind of people we are becoming along the way. It helps us imagine consequences before they arrive. It helps us test ideas. It helps us ask what has been normalised so slowly that we barely noticed it happening at all. It can show us worlds of control, extraction, and loneliness. But it can also show us cooperation, courage, care, and entirely different ways of being.

At its best, science fiction does not just predict the future… it interrogates the present.

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Science fiction matters because it stretches the horizon.

Gregg the Artivist

Horror matters for different reasons.

Horror drags what we would rather avoid from under the bed, out of the closet, or from the dark corners into the room and refuses to let it stay hidden. It asks what we have normalised. What we are refusing to face. What happens when the call is coming from within the house.

That is why horror can feel especially relevant now. We are living in a time where so much that should shock us is becoming familiar. Endless violence. Authoritarian language. Ecological collapse. Systemic cruelty. Moral numbness. Horror understands that dread. It knows that sometimes the real fear is not the monster out there, but the systems, beliefs, and behaviours we have already allowed to live among us.

By the way, I think you can consider  American Doctor as a horror. It is bloody terrifying.

I hope you can see my logic in this next sentence… I think if science fiction helps us imagine beyond the  world we have, then maybe horror helps expose what is wrong within it. 

And I’m convinced that both matter because both help us feel and think at the same time. Not by giving us quick or right answers, but by widening the emotional and moral space in which we can face what is happening.

Fiction as a rehearsal space

That widening matters, because something hit me the other week while watching a science fiction story built around one question: what if events had gone the other way? I got stuck in thought about how rarely I prepare for things not working out. There is no rehearsal. And that is one of the reasons I think fiction matters so much in unstable times. It gives us somewhere to rehearse.

Not rehearse for one exact future, as if any of us can predict what is coming with precision. But rehearse emotionally,ethically, socially and maybe, even spiritually? 

I really feel that stories let us step inside difficult situations without having to survive them in real life first. In a way, they let us ask what we would do. What we might become. What fear, power, grief does to people. And what survival and care asks of us.

I think, they let us practice being confronted. They can help us sit with moral complexity, notice who is missing and imagine other responses.

Sometimes they let us practice fear, courage, grief, sacrifice, solidarity and hope.

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Not because I needed to forget reality, but because I needed help carrying it.

Gregg the Artivist

On reflection, I think that is why I needed fiction after American Doctor. Not because I needed to forget reality, but because I needed help carrying it. I needed stories that could hold fear and tenderness at the same time. My fiction getaway was Hail Mary. It gave me a version of that: two very different beings facing the same problem, learning to cooperate, care, and act.

OK I know that sounds simplistic, but it’s a reminder survival is not only about strength or intelligence, but about connection, exchange, and the willingness to step up when care is suddenly thrust upon you.

The stories we need now: Fiction and Future Imaginations

I do not think we need fiction now because reality is too hard to face. I think we need fiction because reality is too hard to face without help.

Im not looking for stories that numb or that flatten everything into doom, or stories that pretend everything will be fine. But stories that help me feel more honestly, think more deeply, and imagine more bravely.

Stories that remind us what is at stake. Stories that ask more of us. Stories that help us stay open.

I guess the point I’m trying so hard to get to here, and back to the very first sentence of this essay, is this: sometimes, when ordinary language fails, fiction helps us find our way back to it. And just as importantly, sometimes fiction is not an escape from reality, but a way back into it.

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Sometimes fiction is not an escape from reality, but a way back into it.

Gregg the Artivist

I’m curious what you think dear readers. Please leave a comment. 

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FAQ's - Fiction and Future Imaginations