What in the world? Storyworlds, science fiction, and futures studies

Abstract

This article looks at how futures studies can use storyworlds to address some of the challenges the field faces. It provides an overview of social constructionism, integral theory/integral futures, and sense-making in the context of the current evolution of futures methodologies. This article also examines the role of narratives generally and science fiction in particular in exploring and communicating about the future. An overview of what storyworlds are and how they have been used in science fiction and futures studies is followed by a pair of cases studies focused on two worldbuilding projects, one for the fictional world of Rilao and the other for the storyworld created for the 2002 film Minority Report. The article concludes with an analysis of how the worldbuilding process is compatible with social constructionism, integral theory/integral futures, and sense-making.

Full text

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DOI:10.6531/JFS.2015.20(2).A25
Journal of Futures Studies, December 2015, 20(2): 25–46
What in the World?
Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures
Studies
Peter von Stackelberg
Alfred State College of Technology (SUNY)
USA
Alex McDowell
University of Southern California
USA
Abstract
This article looks at how futures studies can use storyworlds to address some of the challenges
the field faces. It provides an overview of social constructionism, integral theory/integral futures,
and sense-making in the context of the current evolution of futures methodologies. This article
also examines the role of narratives generally and science fiction in particular in exploring and
communicating about the future. An overview of what storyworlds are and how they have been
used in science fiction and futures studies is followed by a pair of cases studies focused on two
worldbuilding projects, one for the fictional world of Rilao and the other for the storyworld created
for the 2002 film Minority Report. The article concludes with an analysis of how the worldbuilding
process is compatible with social constructionism, integral theory/integral futures, and sense-making.
Keywords: worldbuilding, storytelling, narrative, science fiction, futures studies, information design,
sense-making
Introduction
The creation of sophisticated imaginary worlds has been central to some of the greatest
epic fantasy and science fiction stories. While the process of worldbuilding – the creation
of imaginary worlds with coherent geographic, social, cultural, and other features – has a
long history, it is reaching new levels of sophistication in 21
st
century science fiction. Rich
storyworlds – the “universes” within which stories are set – provide detailed contextual rule-
ARTICLE

Journal of Futures Studies
26
sets that develop a larger reality that extends beyond a single story, while potentially
providing a deeper understanding of the underlying systems that drive these worlds.
A number of theories – among them sense-making, integral theory, and social
constructionism – have found their way into emerging and evolving foresight
methodologies. Storyworlds (von Stackelberg & Jones, 2014, pp.66-68) and the
process of worldbuilding are compatible with many of these approaches.
Foresight professionals should understand both the role of storyworlds in
futures-oriented work and the process of worldbuilding used to create those
storyworlds. The emerging theory and practice of worldbuilding provides insights
that may be used to address some of the more vexing challenges facing futures
studies and its practitioners.
Theories and Approaches Influencing Futures Studies
A variety of theories and approaches from both inside and outside of the field
of futures studies have influenced the evolution of futures methodologies. Among
those from outside the field of futures studies are social constructionism, integral
theory, and sense-making, while approaches like causal layered analysis, critical
futures studies, and integral futures come from within the field. This paper does not
attempt a thorough analysis of these various methods as they are applied to futures
studies; many excellent articles have already been written on these topics by Floyd
(2008), Fuller and Loogma (2009), Inayatullah (2010), Slaughter (2011), and others.
The overview presented in this section is intended to provide a basic introduction
to these various theories and approaches in order to frame the context within which
storyworlds and worldbuilding exist in relation to futures studies.
Causal Layered Analysis
Causal layered analysis (CLA) was developed to move “beyond the superficiality
of conventional social science research and forecasting methods” (Inayatullah, 2004,
pp.8-9) and delve more deeply into how subjectivity, interpretation, and cultural
context affect our understanding of the future and our actions in shaping it. (Riedy,
2008) The core assumption of CLA is that there are multiple levels to making sense
of reality and the future. (Riedy, 2008) Causal layered analysis’ philosophical and
theoretical ties to social constructionism are clear and explicit. (Fuller & Loogma,
2009)
Social Constructionism
Central to social constructionism is the idea that whenever we employ words
or other symbols to refer to objects in our social world we are constructing them;
quite literally, as meaningful social objects that we can take account of in our
actions. Constructionism is related to symbolic interaction theory and the sociology
of action, which proposes that we actively make and remake social structures and
institutions during the course of our daily activities. (Fuller & Loogma, 2009, pp.71-
79)
When applied to futures studies, social reality can be seen as a construction that
each member of a group contributes to by developing a picture of the world using
currently available information. (Miller, 1994, pp.1-16) Slaughter stated “social
construction of reality is an attempt to operationalize the deepest purpose of critical

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
futures work in ways that consciously and deliberately lead toward more humanly
viable futures than those currently in prospect.” (Slaughter, 2002, pp.26-31)
Knowledge as a creative social process is a powerful explanation for the
unpredictability of the future, which is built on the creation of knowledge and on
the way that knowledge guides everyday choices. Social constructionism is resonant
with most or arguably all knowledge (e.g. even the meaning of mathematics is
social), including the way in which knowledge of the future is produced and used.
Foresight is both a social construction and a process for social construction. (Fuller
& Loogma, 2009, pp.71-79)
Integral Theory
At the core of Integral Theory are four irreducible perspectives – subjective,
intersubjective, objective, and interobjective – that should be used when attempting
to fully understand any topic or aspect of reality.
• The
subjective perspective examines the individual’s interior world, with its
concerns of individual motivation, changes in changes in people’s values,
perceptions, and goals, and the meaning of life. (Collins & Hines, 2010)
• The
objective perspective examines the individual’s exterior world, with
its concerns about changes in the ways people act externally; (e.g., voting
patterns, consumer behavior, reproductive practices, etc.).
• The
interobjective perspective examines the collective exterior world,
generally referred to as the physical world, with its concerns about
measurable changes in natural and constructed external environments.
• The
intersubjective perspective examines the collective interior world of the
shared meaning of groups, as expressed in their culture, with concerns about
shared collective structures, such as changes in languages, cultures, and
institutions.
Critical Futures Studies and Integral Futures
Critical futures studies (CFS) opened the “social interiors” of the future –
social factors such as language, worldviews, paradigms and values – which were
overlooked by more traditional futures studies approaches that focused on exterior
aspects of social systems such as population trends, new technologies, infrastructure
changes, and so on. (Slaughter, 2008, pp.120-137) The “social interiors” Slaughter
referred to are the equivalent of the intersubjective perspective in Integral Theory,
while the exterior aspects are the interobjective perspective.
Integral Futures (IF) extends the perspective of critical futures studies by
adding the subjective and objective perspectives of Integral Theory to futures
methodologies. Scenario development is a complex, detailed process that requires
foresight practitioners and clients to have a high degree of self-knowledge and a
nontrivial grasp of human psychology. Adding IF to scenarios opened individual and
collective human interiors to much deeper examination. (Slaughter, 2008, pp.120-
137)
Sense-making
Sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their experiences
and the world around them. (Weick, 1995) Narratives are an important part of the

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process by which sense is made of events and environments. (Currie & Brown,
2003, pp.563-586) Sense-making is a social activity in which plausible stories are
shared, retained, or preserved. Narratives are both individual and shared products
of conversations. (Currie & Brown, 2003, pp.563-586). When engaged in sense-
making, individuals have an interaction during which they simultaneously shape and
react to the environment they face. (Thurlow & Mills, 2009, pp.459-579)
Sense-making is vital to the processing of information. If we are unable to put
information into context and ascribe meaning to it, that information is lost. (Raltonen
& Barth, 2005)
(T)he ways we imagine the future, understand the past, and come to
grips with the present are extremely valuable in providing continuity and
direction for our lives. Sense-making is rooted in time and space, and
occurs at the intersection of three horizons: the past, present, and future…
Sense-making is also gap-bridging, because by moving theoretically and
analytically across time and space we bridge gaps inherent in the human
condition…Sense-making is accomplished by verbalizations that involve
information, knowledge, cognition, thoughts, and conclusions (Raltonen
& Barth, 2005, pp. 45-46)
Narratives and Futures Studies
Storytelling in all its forms exists in our world for one major reason amongst
others – it provides a way to make sense of the world around us. Fiction is a
powerful tool that through, for instance, metaphor and fable provides ways in which
deeper meaning is conveyed and the unfamiliar is contextualized.
Storytelling has become an increasingly important tool in facilitating changes
in people and organizational cultures (Kaye, 1995; Maas, 2012), while the role of
media and its narratives in shaping public opinion and societal values has been
widely studied (McCombs, 2002; Semetko, 2004). Narratives are crucial to futures
communications, supporting strategic decision-making and critical reflection by
helping organizational actors comprehend uncertainties. (Li, 2013) Jarva (2014)
states that narrative has the potential to fill the gap between images of various
futures and the actions needed to create those futures.
A futures narrative creative process is described by Schultz, Crews, and Lum
(Schultz, Crews, & Lum, 2012, p.137).
Our goals in designing this process were three-fold: 1) to create a
participatory, integrated futures process that digs more deeply into
organizational cultural assumptions and blind spots; 2) to produce
scenarios inductively by interconnecting impacts of multiple variables to
mimic more closely the turbulence of real-world change; and 3) engage
participants in creating their own richly detailed, vivid, and dramatic
stories about possible futures. (Schultz, Crews, & Lum, 2012, p.137)
Embracing narrative and particularly fiction can provide one of the most
powerful tools for building and exploring plausible futures.
Design fiction involves the convergence of design and fiction to prototype
possible future outcomes of contemporary technological, social, political, and
cultural life. Design fiction often takes the form of short films and critical design

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
objects and artifacts that help build rich narratives that can serve as prototypes of
future worlds. (Stein, 2014)
Science Fiction vs. Futures Studies
The impact of science fiction on popular visions of the future is considerable.
Science fiction is clearly the most visible and influential contemporary form
of futurist thinking in the modern world. (Lombardo, 2006, p.5) However, the
relationship between science fiction and futures studies has at times been strained.
The relationship of futures studies with popular culture is characterized by “a deep
uneasiness”, with anxieties about “their legitimacy and utility of popular culture-
steeped futures content, and the threat that the credibility of futures professionals
will be disrupted and usurped.” (Li, 2013, p.138)
The relationship between science fiction and futures studies is often one in
which each side worries about being confused with the other. (Li, 2013) There is
anxiety in the futures field about a conflict between “expert/elite and grassroots/
amateur producers” of futures knowledge. (Li, 2013)
Li (2013) said that the futures field’s attitude towards engaging with popular
culture can be expressed in three broad ways:
• Monkish, where professional futures knowledge is institutionally protected
from popular culture.
• Gonzo-ish, where popular culture is the primary target for information and
insights from “grittily enlightened” futurists.
• Collapse-Folkish, where futures knowledge is thoroughly mangled after
being absorbed by grassroots popular culture.
Li notes that the futures field’s relationship with popular culture in general and
science fiction in particular has improved but is still limited by a deep uneasiness
over the relationship between the two. (Li, 2013) This divide between science fiction
and futures studies is neither necessary nor desirable. There is a long history of
crossover between the two, with each positively influencing the other. Authors like
H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke, for example, frequently and successfully crossed
back and forth from science fiction and futures studies. A little later in this article we
will examine more closely how the 2002 science fiction film Minority Report used
futures techniques and professional futurists as part of the worldbuilding process.
The power and popularity of science fiction comes from its narrative approach,
which uses dramatic plots, compelling story lines, interesting characters – human
and otherwise – and fascinating settings.
It is imaginative, concrete, and often highly detailed scenario-building
about the future set in the form of stories…It has become so popular
because it appeals to the dramatic dimension within people. Life seems
more like a story that a set of abstractions, and just as history is a multi-
faceted story, the future will be a complex saga of stories. (Lombardo,
2006, p.5)
Futures methods should target both cognitive (intellectual) and affective
(emotional) processes. (von Stackelberg & Jones, 2014) Affective (emotional)
processes should be specifically targeted since emotional stimuli has a significant

Journal of Futures Studies
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impact on, among other things, focusing attention, processing information faster,
and provoking empathic responses towards others. (von Stackelberg & Jones, 2014)
Science fiction can provide that kind of emotional stimuli:
Although science fiction may inform it also produces an emotional
experience in the reader. The future is felt, as well as imagined and
considered. This emotional dimension often translates into inspiration.
(Lombardo, 2006, p.8)
The use of science fiction to explore the forces and choices in our world is
similar to the futures field’s scenario planning, causal layer analysis, integral futures,
and other approaches for exploring alternative futures. Future-oriented science
fiction tends to fall into one of four literary categories (Levin, 2010):
• Cautionary tales that emphasize the consequences – generally negative – of
some aspect of today’s society.
• Thought experiments – also referred to as “what if” stories – that examine
the potential impacts of some current or anticipated event, technology, or
trend.
• Literalized metaphors that use a metaphor to study a particular aspect of our
world – for example, stories of space aliens to address our alienation from
society – and make it concrete.
• Explorations of new science and technology that use new advances as the
basis for a storyline.
These four literary categories could be readily adapted by foresight professionals
and applied to futures studies through genuine, rich, and deep worldbuilding of the
future.
Narratives about the future can trigger new directions for thought and
exploration that foster the creation of new realities. The self-lacing shoes from Back
to the Future II, a science fiction film released in 1989, became a reality in 2015
when Nike’s innovation chief, who designed the shoes for the film, announced
plans to release the shoes as a commercial product. (Luntz, 2015) The film’s main
character time travels to 2015 and finds a variety of futuristic inventions.
Many futuristic technologies depicted in the film Minority Report have been
developed since the film’s release in 2002. These include a gesture-driven computer
interface, personalized advertising, face recognition technology, driverless cars,
and robotic insects. (Alba, 2014; Howard, 2014; Prigg, 2012) According to
Alex McDowell, production designer for Minority Report, the film provided an
opportunity for entertainment and science to intersect and use fiction as a testing
ground for reality. (McDowell, 2015)
A formal framework for science fiction prototyping has emerged as a way to
communicate complex ideas about science and technology to lay audiences in a way
that provoked thought and discussion about the future. (Graham, Greenhill, Dymski,
Coles, & Hennelly, 2015) The science fiction prototype framework uses narratives
that are based explicitly on scientific and technological facts as a design tool in the
development of a technology. The subtlety of how people will use and interact with
new technology provides insights that are fed into it as it works its way through the

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
technology development process. (Graham, Greenhill, Dymski, Coles, & Hennelly,
2015)
Urban Futures
Closely related to both design fiction and science fiction prototyping is urban
futures, in which science fiction and other forms of narrative are used to explore
the future of cities. Narrative plays an important role in encouraging discourse in
urban planning and engaging communities in the design process. (Collie, 2011)
These “cities of the imagination” can connect people to a particular place, even if it
is imaginary, and help them make sense of that world and their place in it. (Popova,
2014) The “what if” scenarios that science fiction presents can stir the imagination
of architects and designers, and inform the creation of cities. (Kerkez, 2014)
While all ction may be enlightening for designers, science ction should
be of distinctive interest for three overlapping reasons: it reflects and
shapes popular culture; the world building propositions of writers and the
work of urban designers and architects share significant concerns; and
sci- offers poetically rich thought experiments that can help designers
understand the nuances of theory. (Childs, 2014)
Figure 1. By conducting research in fields as diverse as architecture, engineering, physics,,
urban planning, technology, and advertising, a team of experts developed a logic-driven vi-
sion of the near future for Minority Report.. For instance, interactive, customized marketing
catered to the characters’ personalities was woven throughout the film. Image courtesy of
20th Century Fox.
In an examination of three 21st century science fiction novels – Peridido Street
Station by China Miéville, Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, and The Dervish
House by Ian McDonald – the authors “give voice to, and believably shape and
reshape, images of ‘the city’, the place where climate, culture, economy, politics,
and environment are integral to determining the urban design”. (Kerkez, 2014)

Journal of Futures Studies
32
On the whole, these novels are also works of aesthetic action and design.
Their atmospheres and settings, eye for compelling and resonant detail,
balancing of multiple storylines, formal structures and other aspects of
craft can inform and inspire today’s designers of built form. (Kerkez,
2014)
Storyworlds in Science Fiction and Futures Studies
As we’ve seen earlier, worldbuilding is an important aspect of science fiction
prototyping and the “cities of the imagination” approach to urban design. In both
situations fictional storyworlds are central to the exploration of and communication
about the future.
A storyworld is defined in part as the place and time in which a narrative
happens. (Herman, 2002) The term “chronotope” – literally “time-space” – has
also been used when describing the temporal and spatial relationships in narratives.
(Bakhtin, 2008) Storyspace and worldspace are also terms that have been used. In
this article we will use the more common term “storyworld”.
In addition to providing a temporal and spatial setting for narratives, storyworlds
should provide coherent geographic, technological, social, cultural, and other
features. Storyworlds can be fictional, non-fictional, or a combination of the two.
“Fictional” and “Non-Fictional” are opposite ends of a spectrum, with storyworlds
tending to fall between the poles rather than falling precisely into one category or
the other.
Storyworlds can provide a “sandbox” within which participants can do thought
experiments or prototype increasingly detailed interactions between different
elements in the storyworld. Text, images audio, video, games, and other forms of
communication can be used to explore emerging science and technology; metaphors
can be created to communicate critical ideas about the future; and the rich source of
material from the storyworld can be used for any number of tales.
These world-building narratives act as maps, allowing us to test our
current strategies and discover new opportunities, while avoiding threats.
By painting immersive pictures of possible future worlds, we can be
prepared no matter what future unfolds. (Salvatico, 2015)
Sophisticated constructed worlds are not new: they have been central to a
number of epic fantasy and science fiction stories. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth
– setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which were written between the
mid-1930s and 1949 – and Frank Herbert’s Arrakis – developed in the early 1960s
as the desert planet in Dune and its five sequels – are notable early examples of
constructed worlds.
We are starting to see the use of storyworlds in futures studies as foresight
professionals move beyond traditional futures tools and methods. ZED.TO: By-
oLogyc, created in 2012, used a comprehensive fictional storyworld as the setting
for a speculative scenario based on the extrapolation of current technology trends,
business models, and values in the biotechnology industry. (Haldenby, 2015) Over
an eight-month period a narrative about “the beginning of the end of the world”
caused by a genetically engineered plague that decimated the human population
was played out using an integrated combination of interactive theatrical events and

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
online content centered on a single storyworld. (The Mission Business, 2013)
An experimental scenario planning exercise developed by Time’s Up and FoAM
in June, 2014 used a combination of approaches such as worldbuilding, business
futures, lucid dreaming, and improvisational theater to develop a “world that was
strangely like ours, yet filled with dreamy metaphors of rolling photocopies and
shape-shifting beings, an eternal twilight and a search for green plants”. (TimesUp,
2014) The resulting imaginary space is used to explore “the doubts, hopes, fears, and
possibilities of the near future.” (TimesUp, 2014)
Worldbuilding Case Study: Rilao
Rilao is an open-source ground-up worldbuilding project that imagines a
fictional archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Elements of the real world cities of Los
Angeles and Rio de Janeiro were fused into the storyworld to create the “DNA”
for Rilao. The fictional world of Rilao first began to emerge in January 2014 when
science fiction and futures studies came together in two worldbuilding classes in the
Media Arts + Practice division at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of
Southern California (USC). Rilao went on to serve as a narrative framework at the
USC School of Architecture, Amsterdam Film School, University of Rotterdam’s
gamification division, the Bauhaus in Dessau, FAMU in Prague, the ESBM school
of journalism in Rio, and design fiction classes offered at the Royal College of Art
and Design in London.
Figure 2. Rilao is an open source fictional storyworld that spawned more than 100 student
projects and over 1000 narratives. Image courtesy World Building Media Lab

Journal of Futures Studies
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For students in the Media Arts + Practice Division of USC’s School of
Cinematic Arts, Rilao became the subject for design fiction in the classroom and
beyond. Many of the narratives mined from the Rilaoan storyworld by students and
other participants evolved into imaginings of future Rilaoan politics and society; the
scientific, cultural, and psychological – both individual and collective – impacts of a
nation-wide plague; terraforming and new architectural techniques to deal with over-
population, and the development of religion, mythology, storytelling, and language.
An architecture student created a practical and dynamic robotic exoskeleton
that could both obscure and display the Rilaoan wearer in their overpopulated
environment, a games group developed an early VR experience for tourist visitors
to Rilao, another game created terraforming to increase the land mass of the island,
a writing student evolved the idea of a script contained in a physical suitcase filled
with artifacts from the world that when read in random combinations could trigger
entirely new stories.
Figure 3. One of the artifacts excavated from the world of Rilao by Murilo Hauser, a Master
of Fine Arts Screenwriting candidate at USC, the Lost Suitcase consists in souvenirs gath-
ered by an outsider who visited Rilao. Propaganda brochures from the Disciples of Lao,
avant-garde seafood, an opera about oil workers; this anonymous traveler sampled various
facets of the archipelago. Each physical fragment offers an entry point into some aspect of
Rilao, including culture, food, architecture, and media. Image courtesy USC World Building
Media Lab
As stories and artifacts were created and added to the storyworld of Rilao, a
complex web of interactions emerged. As a result, the evolution of Rilao was fluid,
chaotic, and open-ended. The multi-threaded, cross-disciplinary, collaborative

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
approach used to create the storyworld aligns closely with the social constructionist
idea that each member of a group contributes to the development of a picture of the
world. This approach to building storyworlds also aligns with the goals for more
deeply examining individual and collective perspectives as advocated by causal
layered analysis, critical futures studies, and integral futures. The use of storyworlds
can also aid the sense-making process by rooting information in to time and space
within a storyworld and providing context and meaning.
Rilao remains an ongoing project fueled by international engagement including
the USC World Building Institute’s Science of Fiction practice-based annual
initiative. In the 2014 event, participants at this three-day “non-conference” were
immersed in the world of Rilao through a carefully constructed set of Rilao-specific
card-based prompts developed by game designer Jeff Watson and festival director
Alex McDowell. Not only did the audience participate in immersive, collaborative
workshops and interactive breakout sessions, but participants were also entertained
at a Rilaoan immersive musical concert, ate Rilaoan food, and examined Rilaoan
artifacts. Currently, further developments of parts of the world of Rilao continue
to expand the overall world of Rilao, as this open-source worldspace is engaged
by audiences at international conferences like the Berlin Film Festival, FMX
2015 in Stuttgart, and the 2015 BAM festival in Bogotá. Recently in Sweden, at
the Awesome Bergman 2015 conference of film and games, three Rilao world
building groups each took a specific scale of the world in 2035 and observed a rapid
development of rich narratives in the city, neighborhood and family that they cross-
pollinated, creating new canon, unexpected narrative threads and diverse characters
in just a few hours. This ability to immerse participants in a persistent coherent
storyworld is one of the key strengths of the worldbuilding process and is one that
holds promise for futures oriented projects.
Worldbuilding Case Study: Minority Report
The futuristic technologies in the 2002 film Minority Report, an action-
detective thriller set in Washington, D.C. in the year 2054, have been widely noted
for how prescient they have been. (Carr, 2010; Harrell, 2010; Hart, 2010) While
worldbuilding had been used before for science fiction projects, Minority Report
took the process to a new level of sophistication. Alex McDowell, a co-author of this
paper, was the production designer on the film.
McDowell said the worldbuilding process for the film came about almost by
accident as a result of a confluence of several events. He and writer Scott Frank
were hired on the same day to work on the film. The previous script for the film had
been thrown out when Spielberg took the project and it took many more months
than expected to complete the new script. In lieu of the customary text, the film’s
designers were effectively obliged to develop the storyworld prior to the script.
Because the script then took much longer than expected to deliver, the process
became a radical departure from the norm of film production to date, or since.
Another critical factor was the falling cost and rising performance of
computer technology, which brought conceptual and 3D visualization into the
design department for the first time. This allowed not only designers, but also the
producers, writers, director, and other members of the production team to share in
the visual and story development process through immersive design visualization
and prototyping.

Journal of Futures Studies
36
There were several examples of the ways in which the design and world building
process disrupted the previous linear production through new technology. McDowell
had experienced early previsualization in Fight Club and through his collaboration
as designer for David Fincher in commercials.
Previs as it became known, is an extension of storyboarding and focuses on
sequence design, where a virtual camera moving in relation to digital characters
and environments brings together the director and key creative leads to determine
solutions – usually visual effects solutions – to complex production issues. For Mi-
nority Report this was developed into a sophisticated design visualization (D-vis)
system that allowed unprecedented collaboration across several of the film crafts. An
example of this is the Sprawl Hotel sequence, when a single camera move traverses
the entire set from above as Spyder surveillance bots search for Anderton.
This intricate camera move required that many elements be carefully explored
prior to any physical execution. The exact placement of a very heavy super
Technocrane and its track above a three-story set was particularly complex as it
needed to reach all necessary views of the characters in the hotel rooms in one shot.
Digital prototyping the shot sequence in advance of building the set and placing
the camera allowed designers to modify the virtual set and character movement
to accommodate real-world camera constraints. After the set was built to match
the digital data specs of the D-vis, the final sequence was rehearsed by the camera
crew reproducing the previs animation of characters and camera within the digitally
designed set. During shooting, the complexity of the sequence had been so carefully
resolved in the digital simulation that the final shot was completed in four takes
within a couple of hours, a shot that traditionally might have taken over a day.
As a very different example of disruption, a digital visualization process was
developed as an urban planning tool to help resolve the design of the world. A 3D
model allowed for iterative development of the rules and logic of the world. This
process involved examining the scale and location of fictional elements relative to
the real world geography and terrain of Washington DC, infrastructure, architecture,
urban development, and transportation systems.
McDowell approached architect Greg Lynn and some of his young architecture
students to join the design department, where they used Maya 3D animation
software to radically change the traditional film design process and incorporate it
into the world build. McDowell also hired car designer Harald Belker, who brought
with him the 3D tools he had been using at BMW, to design the unique vehicles of
Minority Report. One of these vehicles was conjoined with the vertical design of the
new architectural city to create a vertical and horizontal transportation system. The
final vertical car stunt sequence in the film was almost entirely produced in post-
production but it was designed, prototyped and developed using 3D visualization.
Not only was Spielberg able to direct the digital animation long prior to shooting, but
he was also able to approve 3D printed maquettes of the vehicles and then see the
same digital data used to manufacture the final car for actor Tom Cruise to interact
with at full scale. In the past, many of the decisions for these sequences would have
been made in post-production during visual effects development, but with Minority
Report that old linear process was upended and replaced by an entirely non-linear
collaboration in the early stages of production, prior to shooting.
These new applications of digital technology in developing the narrative
logic for story and production resulted in a rich storyworld with a unique level of
consistency of vision for the film.

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
The third factor in shaping the film was director Steven Spielberg’s requirement
that Minority Report be approached as future reality, not traditional science fiction.
He did not want to allow his audience to escape the implications of the film’s
outcome of the film by dismissing it as simply science fiction.
Spielberg locked in a few key elements of the story, which was already radically
changed from the 1956 Philip K. Dick short story on which it was based: it would
be set in Washington DC in the 2050s; it would be a benign and apparently utopic
future world with no fossil fuels, sustainable and ecological, with technology that
works and augments the society and political, cultural, economic and technological
systems; and at the heart of the film would be the primary societal disruptors –
the Precogs themselves. Their ability to predict violent crimes and apprehend the
perpetrators before they commit the crimes results in Washington DC becoming a
murder-free city. This in turn leads to a massive population shift to the Washington
DC area, which in turn leads to the development of a new vertical city and a highly
stratified society.
With Spielberg looking for a future reality that fit within those parameters, the
processes of narrative design and the visioning of innovative technologies and urban
environments were not simple. Typical movie design research involves in-house
designers and usually a single researcher gathering information. (McDowell, 2015)
The process for Minority Report was much more sophisticated.
Figure 4. Actor Tom Cruise works on set, using G-speak - a gesture-based computer inter-
face for Tom Cruise’s character developed by computer scientist John Underkoffler and Alex
McDowell. This fictional prototype of gesture recognition was developed into a real world
interface, called G-Speak, by Underkoffler and his start-up Oblong Industries after the film
was released. Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Spielberg and producer Walter Parkes had convened a group of experts for
Jurassic Park with great success. Without a developed script, McDowell and Frank
worked with Spielberg determined to create an initial approach to a comprehensive
near-future world through conducting in-depth research with experts in architecture,
engineering, urban planning, advertising, art, science and technology, and politics.

Journal of Futures Studies
38
In 1999, they took the first step in the research process by engaging in multiple
weeks of internal design research. That research framed a two-day meeting with
the first round of experts, convened by Peter Schwartz’s Global Business Network
and Walter Parkes. In addition to futurists, a diverse group of experts in a variety of
fields was present, along with Spielberg, the producers, Scott Frank, Alex McDowell
and a small team of designers.
At that initial meeting, the first level of detail of flying vehicles and weaponry
was provided by Dr. Shaun Jones of DARPA, and other members of the group
provided a wealth of discussion and information about the ways in which this future
city might develop, with its initial logic of society, politics and urban development
framed by the demands of the story. In the two-day gathering, the group sliced
through this future world, looking broadly at a very diverse set of conditions. This
was the first glimpse of what would become the world building process for the film.
Writer Douglas Coupland produced a highly tongue-in-cheek 100-page document of
the future in 2050 specifically for the futurists and designers gathered together for
Minority Report that was highly simulative for the group. It is interesting to note that
the interplay between the traditional ‘futurist’ approaches – based on current, real-
world constraints – and the storytelling demands created a valuable creative tension.
Figure 5. The worldbuilding mandala is rooted in a logic-driven world space crafted through
deep research and exploration, Minority Report’s narrative organically evolved out of the
refinement of the storyworld. The 21st century digital and non-linear design process replaces
the anachronism of the linear, industrial 20th century model and allows for a fluid cross-dis-
ciplinary collaboration from the start of development of the story space. Image copyright and
courtesy of Alex McDowell
The Mandala was initially developed by McDowell in 2004 to describe the radical
change put in place by his world building process. It shows that after an initial
impetus from the story origin at the center (note, the script is no longer considered
Step 1) the first approach is to what disruption in the narrative would stimulate the

39
What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
interrogation of the world.
This first stage is known as “What If and Why Not”. In this case the story
impetus of the Precogs – “What if there were three precognitive beings who could
predict murder and allow Precrime Police to arrest perpetrators before they commit
the crime” – leads to a question of range, whether this is an experiment unique to
DC, and in turn to a massive influx of population to get the benefit of the murder-
free society, leading to the need for rapid urban development. This is contextualized
by knowing where and when the story takes place, which brings real world
constraints like the zoning laws in DC into direct relationship with the fiction of
the narrative. At three broad scales – the world scale (the larger urban conurbation),
the community scale (the new Mall City), and the individual scale (Anderton’s
apartment, his car, and his artifacts) – the world begins to fill in with connective
rules that develop a holistic logic-driven world space. The overview indicated in the
Mandala represents a Horizontal slice through the world – all the major elements of
society, culture, politics, science, technology, history, infrastructure and ecosystem
that interconnect the narrative elements of the world. To develop the fine detail of
the world, the world builders then engage in a series of Vertical ‘core samples’ that
interrogate the world system in relation to specific elements that have a direct impact
on the narrative. These detailed investigations demand answers of the ecologies and
domains of the world that in turn tighten the logic.
An example of how the tension between the needs of the narrative conflicted
with real-world constraints was the development of the urban landscape in Minority
Report. Initially, the concept was for Washington DC and the Mall to be filled with
high-rises. In an interview in 2012, McDowell said:
People from DC were saying that you can’t build anything higher than
the Capitol building, and you’ll never be allowed to, even in 50 years’
time. So we moved all of our architecture across the Potomac River and
developed a vertical city, although there was a lot of resistance to that
from the [think tank] group. (Bonnington et al., 2012)
In the think tank, futurist urban planner Joel Garreau advocated his “Edge City”
theories of an extended suburban city, but the film’s world builders rejected this in
favor of stacked vertical urban spaces that gave much richer narrative scope, and
provided an effective metaphor for the consumer hierarchy of the new city. For
McDowell, this is an early example of the benefits of a coherent storyworld in which
the world’s internal logic helps shape the narrative. (McDowell, 2015)
Two important contributors at that initial meeting were physicist Neil
Gershenfeld and architect William Mitchell, both from the MIT Media Lab.
McDowell recalls:
Neil told the assembled team that when he received the brief for the
gathering, he had gotten to thinking, and although he hadn’t previously
considered precognition, he though he knew how to solve it. The result
of his theorizing around precognition quantum pairs led directly to the
design of the PreCog Chamber.
Mitchell did a deep dive into urban design that allowed the design team to
develop many of the characteristics of the Mall City where Tom Cruise’s
character lives. (McDowell, 2015)

Journal of Futures Studies
40
After the initial stimulus of the GBN group, intensive research for the film
began, first with a visit to the MIT Media Lab. (McDowell, 2015) At MIT,
McDowell and prop-master Jerry Moss observed and experienced many early ideas
in innovation labs that were developed into futuristic artifacts and functionalities for
Minority Report. What he saw included:
• The very first functional examples of e-ink, which inspired the film’s
flexible media
• The robotics lab, with technologies that were extrapolated to become the
bio-mimetic PreCrime Spyders and other robotics in the film
• Targeted advertising, which in the film not only recognized individuals but
their state of mind
John Underkoffler, at the time a recent MIT Media Lab graduate, was
McDowell’s guide to the Lab for this initial visit. His research on computer
interfaces and gesture recognition caught McDowell’s attention. Underkoffler was
subsequently hired as science advisor in the film’s design department; his research
became the iconic gesture-based system used by John Anderton – the Tom Cruise
character – and others in the PreCrime police department.
The deep research by the design team offered up robots based on insect
behavior, non-lethal weapons, driverless cars, eye-tracking, voice command of
computers, holography, optical tomography, heads-up displays, personalized
advertising, even cloud computing. An exploration of smart elevators, maglev
vehicles, and driverless taxicabs stimulated the prototyping of a three-dimensional
transportation eco-system. McDowell’s process was to “extrapolate forward” – if
Amazon has established a relationship with the consumer that allows personal data
tracking to evolve into “if you like this, you’ll like that”, then why would that not
extend to targeting consumers in real time in advertising and store point of sale.
The research process became an essential part of the narrative design and
prototyping of the world of Minority Report, extending through the first year of
development and establishing an unprecedented collaboration space for director,
designer, writer, and the whole production team.
All of the information gathered was assembled into an 80-page encyclopedic
vision of the storyworld. This document – dubbed the “2050 Bible” by the design
team – combined found images, custom illustrations, and text to set out details of
the science and technology, cultural, and socio-political aspects of the story. The
document became an important resource for the design department and all key
creators as they came into the film. Incorporated into the 2050 Bible was a series of
white papers written by design scientist John Underkoffler to provide the “science”
for a multitude of elements that required a greater degree of detail, both in the design
and as drivers for story. For example, in the Precog Chamber (the Temple) the
quantum physics that became the underlying logic for the precogs, determined the
milky liquid in which they float, the optical tomography extracting the images from
their precognitive minds, the intricate CNC-cut interior surface that was ‘sound-
proofing for the mind’, the gesture language, the machine parts of the transparent
computers, and the “red ball” system were conceived as an interconnected set
of narrative triggers connecting to the larger world aspects of the precogs, the
contrasting aspect of them in a public sculpture, their range and influence, their
deification.

41
What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
The 2050 Bible and the research behind it developed into a viable way to
contextualize the future for the film. The investigations of the design team and
the deeply researched ideas set out in the 2050 Bible directly stimulated narrative
elements based on storyworld vehicles, weapons, building interiors, and urban
landscapes as well as the interactions between characters and the various storyworld
components. For example, the three-dimensional transportation system emerged
as a design prototype, which in turn prompted the addition to the script of a new
chase segment called the Vertical Car Chase. It became clear that the traditional
scriptwriting process – the classic image of a writer sitting in a bungalow in the
Hollywood Hills creating a stacked 120 pages of a script (McDowell, 2015) –
could not provide the layered and integrated detail that the world building process
developed.
Figure 6. The creative team imagined that a massive influx of population drawn by the
Precogs’ influence on creating a murder-free society had given rise to an immensely ver-
tical Washington D.C. Key factors would drive the evolution the city, such as the need for
three-dimensional roadways, as vehicles would be required to negotiate horizontal and verti-
cal space. Artist: James Clyne; Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
The connection between the design vision and the accuracy of prototypes of
near-future technology in Minority Report demonstrates the power of worldbuilding
and interrelationship of science fiction storytelling and reality. When the film’s
design team visited the innovation labs at MIT or spoke with experts at Apple,
Lexus, and DARPA, projects viewed were often 10 to 15 years from fruition.
Clearly, more than a series of “genius forecasts” helped shape the Minority Report
storyworld.
The complex evolution of a story requires interactive design of physical,
political, cultural, and other environments and systems. What is clear from the
worldbuilding process developed for Minority Report is that the combination of deep
research feeding a logic-driven multi-disciplinary and collaborative storyworld can
provide rich narrative outcomes as well as significant insight and foresight. It is not
an individual series of foresights from futurists but an organic evolutionary process
centered in storytelling that allowed the emergence of a holistic fictional world that
was genuinely “precognitive”.
Conclusions
Scriptwriting instructor and story consultant John Truby states that you set a
story in the future to give the audience another pair of glasses, to abstract the present

Journal of Futures Studies
42
in order to understand it better. (Truby, 2011) It might also be said that foresight
professionals should set the future in a story (and storyworld) so the audience is
better able to experience it.
As our society develops and changes, both futures studies and science fiction can
be used to show what will happen if we continue along certain paths. The freedom
that worldbuilding allows makes both futures studies and science fiction more
powerful by applying creative imagination to real conditions and then extrapolating
forward and outward. The worldbuilding process fits well with a number of theories
and approaches that have influenced futures thinking and methodology:
• The creation of storyworlds is a collaborative knowledge building process
that is consistent with the principles of social constructionism. As we saw
with both the Rilao and Minority Report case studies, the creation of those
storyworlds was a highly social, integrated, and collaborative process.
• Integral theory and integral futures call for futures methods that look at
issues from the subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective
perspectives. Storyworlds can provide a venue for including all of these
perspectives in a foresight project. Characters in the storyworld present
numerous opportunities to examine an individual’s interior and exterior
worlds, while the storyworld’s settings, complete with fictional physical
environments, social groups, cultural systems, and technologies, provide the
opportunity to examine the collective interior and exterior worlds.
• Sense-making is a process by which people’s experiences are given meaning.
It is a social activity involving storytelling and shared conversations, with
participants simultaneously shape and react to their environment. (Currie &
Brown, 2003) Storyworlds can provide an open, evolving, multi-participant
environment from which the meaning can be developed through the stories
that are told and the conversations that are shared.
• The role of narrative in futures studies is not new. Whether it is the
futures narrative creative process described by Schultz, Crews, and Lum
(2012, p.137), the future-focused transmedia narratives described by von
Stackelberg and Jones (2014), or design fiction described by Stein (2014),
narrative is playing an increasingly significant role in futures studies. As
storytelling both inside and outside the futures field becomes increasingly
sophisticated, the importance of storyworlds and worldbuilding grows
• Some futurists may be wary of science fiction treading on territory that they
feel is better left to futures studies. However, science fiction does play a
major role in shaping popular perceptions of the future. The emergence of
science fiction prototyping to explore technological and urban futures based
on science fiction is showing how science fiction can play a meaningful role
in shaping technologies and cities.
Worldbuilding should be central to all of these approaches to constructing and
exploring the future. As we’ve seen with the Rilao and Minority Report case studies,
worldbuilding can and should be a multi-threaded, cross-disciplinary, collaborative
process in which the storyworld evolves as stories and artifacts were created. In
the case of the Rilao project, hundreds of participants worldwide, many of them
students, some of them aged five to 14, contributed more than a thousand stories and
artifacts to the storyworld. Storyworld development for Minority Report involved

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What in the World? Storyworlds, Science Fiction, and Futures Studies
a smaller group of participants and the results were much more tightly focused on
producing that storyworld for a film. However, in both cases deeper insights into the
future emerged as the storyworlds evolved and grew because of the contributions of
multiple participants. While worldbuilding and the use of storyworlds is not the only
method for working collaboratively, it is one of the most effective methods available
for developing deep, rich narratives that lay out visions of the future.
Correspondence
Peter von Stackelberg
Alfred State College of Technology (SUNY)
USA
E-mail: pvonstackelberg@stny.rr.com
Alex McDowell
School of Cinematic Arts
Media Arts + Practice
University of Southern California
USA
E-mail: amcdowell@cinema.usc.edu
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