Daniel Bell, Social Forecasting, and Science Fiction

This article argues that the work of the sociologist Daniel Bell can help to clarify science fiction’s relationship to the future by (1) distinguishing between social forecasting and the prediction of future events; and (2) showing how social forecasting and science fiction can both provide a more or less plausible imaginative frame for raising, exploring, and making sense of the “agenda of questions” that a future society is liable to confront. It goes on to argue that science fiction takes social forecasting a step further than Bell through its awareness of how such forecasting can bring about change in the present. This article therefore identifies one way in which sociology and science fiction can be mutually beneficial without reducing one to the other.