Somali Tales

Definition

A prompt is a theme, a topic or an idea you can use to write something: a short story, a blog post, an essay, and so on.

How many years into the future?

What will people look like in a thousand and six hundreds years? How will they dress? What will they eat? How will they mate? How will they fight?

While I’m writing my own fiction, I encounter some hard choices when it comes to describe and imagine future humans. So I use some specific guidelines to help me imagine, like a look at our evolution for the last thousand years.

The truth is evolutionary speaking, 1600 years is virtually nothing. 1600 ago (424 of the common Era) people were anatomically similar to us. Same overall body, same brain structures, same overall cognitive capacities.

Culture

They may have been a bit shorter, and less healthier at most. Their resources were different, meaning they had less access to nutritious food or to evidence-based healthcare. Finally, their beliefs had a huge impact on their way of life, since they did not know how their brain could fail them and reorganize their reality (cognitive bias).

This means that what is significantly different from the past is our “culture.” Not the kind where we compare different countries and their people, but culture as in the way we learn something from the observation of another person’s behavior. Today, a simple YouTube video can change the way you cook, plan or write. The transmission of information, and learning, changed for the best. We adopt new behaviors more often and way faster than people from the past.

So I will personally focus on behavior and cultures. This includes politics, love, physical fights and wars. I’ll add some tech, but not that much compared to other work of fiction.

The Prompt

My question and writing prompt is : For you, how will humans live, love and communicate in the future? Me, I chose to explore the topic of violence (interpersonal and State-sponsored), but you can choose any other topics. It can pertain to how we will maintain our health, a very important subject for humanity. You can choose to explore how we will mate or procreate and even how we will meditate. Which role will technology play? What if we go reverse our progress and look for more natural way to live? What if we discover something that was always there but we never knew about?

Realism

Make an effort to envision the most realistic world, but do not hesitate to incorporate extraordinary event. Do not be guided only by your personal wishes or fears; like only imagining a world which is a metaphor for “heaven” where everyone love each other, devoid of wars. Or at least, if you truly believe we will evolve into peaceful communities, please show a reasonable way in which humans will showcase their negatives traits or their impulse. In a more perfect world, will we live in a world based on ruthless competition, where everyone is enrolled in a sport, the only place where it is allowed to crushed the opponent?

What this prompt should show is how you perceive the true nature of human; the enduring trait across time. What are our negative and positive traits ? How will they affect our institutions, our families?

World

Another aspect to work on is: how will the world evolved in 1600 years? In the past, like the year 424 (C.E.), America was still unseen by the rest of the world. Can there be a discovery of this magnitude for the future humans, on this Earth? Not a whole other continent, but discovering something huge about the deep ocean which we have barely explored, for example ? Something to unsettle us and make us question everything we thought about living organism, the origin of life itself? An example is a fish or a new underwater complex societies. For example, a new mammal specie with strange relations.

Another element is, 1600 ago, science barely exist. Today it is shining bright. How will it be in the future? Will we keep on becoming more “rational” to the point of avoiding any spontaneity (reminiscing of “The Giver” from Lois Lowry). What place will tech take in this new life? Avoid clichés and easy tropes.

You can also imagine our encounter with an alien life (a full organism, which can be barely perceivable or human-like individuals). How will it reshape our lives?

For example, the movie Arrival (based on a book) really offer a great dystopia. Encountering an alien life which do not wish to harm us, while exploring the importance of language, the complex notion of time gave us a beautiful piece of art.

Dystopia

The prompts really pushes to imagine a dystopian future. But if you want to write an essay, imagine how will the states changes. Are “countries” as we know them, viable? How can we rethink our every day interactions, without being neither too optimist nor pessimist? Will you be able to buy a car in the future or will we all be force to share some state-sponsored one, to make way for a more pedestrian life? Will countries still exist in the way they are if we give up on “ethnic” identities? Or will we reinforces our beliefs and prejudices?

Prejudice

Will there still be different social classes? For example, I believe (and hope) that the concept of “races” or “ethnicity” or even gender will be less important in a thousands of years. But I can imagine other type of prejudices; Class, intelligence or beauty are good contenders. What is your opinion? What if there was a way to restrict access to these things ? By forbidding plastic surgeries, or any mental enhancers for example? That is the option I take in my own fiction. In “A True Mission”, people will be unable to change their physical appearance. It is not directly related to beauty, but it is a side effect.

Content

Please do not hesitate to include intrigues to showcase how your world work. Will you take a detective solving a crime? Will you take the point of view of a young boy, wandering in the city and visiting the outcasts? Will you take a group of adolescent being trained in a new profession? 15 years ago, no one could predict the rise of “influencers,” or the importance of social media. So do not neglect the social aspect of your new world.

Inspirations

For some inspirations, you can look up to “Minority report,” (the old movie with Tom Cruise) “Gattaca,” (with Ethan Hawkes and Jude Law); “Never let me go” (the book from Kazuo Ishiguro is not set in the future exactly, but it is an excellent dystopia), or two of my favorite “Parabole of the Sower,” from Octavia E. Butler and Children of men (I’ve never read the book, but the movie with Clive Owen is spectacular).

If you are inspired by this prompt, please do share your contribution by sending a link to your post in the comments. I would love to know and read you!

Also, let me know what you think of this prompt.

All the Best.