It feels as if the future is beginning to reveal itself.

Covid has reinforced the sense of entitlement of the human species; we’r e not going to get culled in the way other species are culled – often at our hands.

Climate change will be solved technologically rather than through a reduction of consumerism. Fossil fuels can be replaced, animal methane production moderated, carbon captured, clean kerosene produced for aircraft, energy efficient systems designed, hardware updated, monitoring sensors installed; storage lakes built for hydro, wind turbines, wave energy and the sun is an infinite energy source…

Surveillance will steadily increase, as will the level of bureaucracy, and compliance demanded.

The digital world will dominate, producing a production line culture of genre product. Presence will become of lesser importance,

There are issues of waste, especially with regard to plastic and nuclear waste. There are issues of shipping and supply chains. There are looming shortages of water and fish and some crucial elements and metals. But there will be technological fixes.

There seems no shortage of capital, for suddenly it can seemingly simply be printed.

A certain sadism prevails and enemies are invented: Cuba, the Taliban, the Uighurs, Venezuela; mainly those who have resisted in some form.

Serious imperial battles between power blocs, threaten.

There are glimmers of a counter culture but only glimmers.

The ecological battle is the new crusade and takes the form of an indigenous romance.

There is a medieval quality to the future, and science fiction was always medieval in flavour: royalty, celebrities, popes and knights, nomadic minstrels, artists, monks and the occasional hermit playing courtly games or waging battle in a universe of heaven and hell, angels and demons.

And a peasantry who occasionally, madly rebel.