Biju Dharmapalan
bijudharmapalan@gmail.com
There is something distinctly unsettling about the times we live in. It is not merely that science fiction is becoming reality-that has always been the quiet promise of human progress-but that the transition now feels alarmingly fast. A novel is written, a film is released, the idea captures public imagination, and almost before the credits stop rolling, echoes of that very idea begin to appear in real life. To many observers, this sequence no longer feels like coincidence. It feels like a pattern.
Consider Jurassic park, scientists are trying to bring back long-extinct animals by genetic engineering. It was an exciting fantasy then. Today, the discussion of de-extinction, gene editing, and synthetic biology is not just a day’s topic, but it is progressing at an incredible pace. Or take the recent worldwide outrage, the COVID-19 pandemic, which resembled so many fictional stories that it appeared that the world was taking directly out of cinematic works. Even the scientifically-based story of Project Hail Mary of interstellar survival is echoing all the current debates of beings venturing into space and the future of mankind out of our home world.
Of interest in these instances is not their resemblance to fiction, but the condensed time frame between fantasy and actualisation. In the past, speculative ideas became reality after a long period of time. Nowadays, it seems like it occurs in years, indeed even months. It is this narrowing that forms a great fiction: that fiction is not at all simply prophesying the future, but it in some way initiates it.
However, to assume this is a sign of some kind of covert arrangement or a pre-calculated plan would be to misguidedly interpret the greater forces involved. The reality is less complex and more complete. Science fiction does not spring out of thin air; it is very much connected with the scientific knowledge and preoccupations of the day. Authors make projections based on the existing. By the time Jurassic Park came into being, molecular biology was in the swift transition. When pandemic thrillers gained popularity, scientists had long been warning about zoonotic diseases and global vulnerability. When Andy Weir wrote his scientifically rigorous narratives, he was building upon decades of astrophysical research.
In other words, fiction is not leaping ahead of science-it is running alongside it.
What has changed, however, is the speed at which science itself progresses. A faster cycle of innovation is functioning in the modern-day world. Innovations in space exploration, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence have ceased to be a century-long process and have become ones spanning years. NASA and other institutions, along with an expanding ecosystem of commercial ventures, are translating the dramatic fantasies into practical applications at a rate never seen before. International coordination, cyber-communication, and enormous investments have shortened timeframes so much that only a few decades ago it was something unimaginable.
Such haste gives an illusion of what is in the present moment. We see a story, and after a short time reality seems to be coming out after it–but in the real sense what both are getting is a portion of the same underlying stream of knowledge and possibility. The trajectory can only be oriented to the public by the story.
It has a psychological aspect to it, as well. It is inborn in human beings to find patterns. Understanding It We are configured to identify relationships among the dots, to see meaning in chance and to create stories that enable us to believe that the world is coherent. A fictional situation that comes into line with a scenario in the real world is dramatic. Yet we simply do not count the number of fictional concepts which do not even come into existence, alien invasion, paradoxes of time, or intelligent robots replacing humans take over. These misses are pushed to the back as the hits strengthen the belief of a trend.
On top of this is the clouting strength of the contemporary media. Today a book is no longer on the printed page; it is a movie, a streaming effect, a worldwide chat. Once fiction reflects reality, it is instantly propagated across social networks to give one a feeling of a first-time planetary-scale deja vu. The idea, narrative, event sequence seems to be closely connected, it feels almost scripted.
Yet, perhaps the biggest thing about it is the following: fiction is not merely a reflection of reality; it constructs it. They tend to inspire the stories which scientists, engineers and innovators read. A child who watches a science fiction film today may become the researcher who develops that technology tomorrow. The difference is that, in today’s world, that “tomorrow” arrives much sooner. With powerful tools, collaborative networks, and rapid prototyping capabilities, ideas can move from imagination to implementation within a decade-or less.
In this sense, what we are witnessing is not a conspiracy but a feedback loop. Fiction inspires science; science enables reality; reality, in turn, fuels new fiction. The cycle continues, each iteration moving faster than the last.
A good illustration is provided by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although its similarity to the fictional outbreak was impressive, the speed at which vaccines were developed was not accidental. Such technologies as mRNA platforms were years old. The crisis just hastened their implementation. What appeared to be an overnight leap was, in fact, the culmination of sustained scientific effort.
The real question, then, is not whether someone is “doing the business” behind the scenes, but whether humanity has reached a point where imagination itself is becoming the primary driver of reality. When the tools of innovation are this powerful, the distance between “what we can imagine” and “what we can build” becomes dangerously small. That is both exhilarating and unsettling.
We are entering an era where fiction is no longer a distant speculation but a near-term possibility. The responsibility, therefore, does not lie in uncovering hidden patterns or conspiracies, but in guiding the direction of this accelerating cycle. What we choose to imagine-and more importantly, what we choose to pursue-will shape the world we inhabit. Reality is not imitating fiction because it is being secretly directed. It is doing so because we now possess the unprecedented ability to turn ideas into existence at extraordinary speed.And that may be the most powerful-and sobering-truth of all.
(The author is the Dean -Academic Affairs, Garden City University, Bengaluru and an adjunct faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore)
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