Every time someone hears that I write future fiction, the first question is almost always the same.

"So... what kind of technology have you invented this time?"

The question always makes me smile, because the honest answer is: none.

I have never started a novel with artificial intelligence, quantum computers, humanoid robots or futuristic gadgets. Those things may eventually find their way into the story, but they never come first. If they did, the novel would become little more than an illustrated prediction of tomorrow's inventions. That has never interested me. What fascinates me instead is something far less spectacular: people, and more specifically the quiet, almost invisible moments when they begin to change without even noticing it themselves.

Technology has always transformed society, but rarely through dramatic revolutions. It enters our lives disguised as convenience. One new application, one small improvement, one clever algorithm at a time. We welcome each step because, taken individually, every innovation seems harmless. It saves time, reduces effort or solves a practical problem. Only years later do we realise that we no longer behave quite the way we once did.

Making choices

That is where my stories begin. Not with machines, but with choices.

Before writing a single chapter, I usually fill pages with questions rather than answers. They are never technical questions. They are deeply human.

What if privacy slowly disappeared because nobody considered it important anymore?

What if telling the truth became less valuable than telling the most convincing story?

What if loneliness survived every technological revolution?

What if people willingly delegated their moral decisions to systems that promised to be more rational than themselves?

Only when I discover a question that genuinely unsettles me do I begin searching for the world in which it could exist. Sometimes that world lies only a few years ahead. Sometimes it feels almost identical to our own. The technology simply provides the conditions under which that particular human dilemma can unfold.

In that sense, future fiction has much more in common with philosophy than with engineering. It is not an attempt to predict what will be invented next, but an attempt to understand who we may become once those inventions quietly become ordinary.

That is why I spend far more time observing people than reading about technology. A conversation overheard on a train, a child talking to a voice assistant as if it were a member of the family, commuters walking through a city without ever looking up from their screens, or an elderly couple paying with a smartphone while apologising because they no longer remember how cash works—these moments reveal more about tomorrow than any laboratory announcement ever could.

The marriage between reality and fiction (heading for a divorce?)

Reality is constantly writing the first draft of future fiction. Writers merely arrive a little later to ask where those small changes might eventually lead.

Perhaps that is why I have never believed that future fiction is really about the future. It is about the present viewed from a slightly different angle, like a mirror that has been tilted just enough to reveal something standing quietly behind us all along.

If readers finish one of my stories feeling slightly uncomfortable—not because the technology seems impossible, but because it feels entirely plausible—then the novel has achieved exactly what I hoped it would. The greatest compliment a writer of future fiction can receive is not "I hope this never happens." It is: "I'm not entirely sure it hasn't already begun."

Discover Ombra's fiction

If this reflection resonates with you, you may also enjoy Ombra's novels, where these ideas are explored through suspense, compelling characters and stories that blur the line between today's reality and tomorrow's possibilities.

AIRE 1: The Anomaly explores a world in which artificial intelligence gradually evolves from a trusted tool into something far more unsettling, forcing ordinary people to question who is really making the decisions.

The Offline Man asks a different but equally disturbing question: what happens when disconnecting from the digital world becomes the most suspicious act of all? It is a near-future thriller about freedom, privacy and the true cost of permanent connectivity.

For more essays, reflections and original stories about AI, technology and speculative storytelling, explore the growing collection on Partizaan Future Fiction.

From Ombra's Notebook

Every novel begins with a question. If it begins with an answer, it usually ends too soon.