---
title: "Scenario Fiction"
description: "The genre Bratton, Chen Qiufan and Lukáš Likavčan propose in the introduction to Hemispherical Stacks, described by Bratton in SPoC as merging two ways of giving counterfactuals literary form: Cold War scenario planning and science fiction."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/scenario-fiction"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/scenario-fiction"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Scenario Fiction

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/scenario-fiction), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The genre Bratton, [Chen Qiufan](https://antikythera.wiki/people/chen-qiufan) and [Lukáš Likavčan](https://antikythera.wiki/people/lukas-likavcan) propose in the introduction to Hemispherical Stacks, described by Bratton in SPoC as merging two ways of giving counterfactuals literary form: Cold War scenario planning and science fiction. Each parent is faulted: think tanks protect incumbents; science fiction is hostage to plot and protagonist and polarized into utopia and dystopia. Scenario fiction drops characters for systems, following cause-and-effect chains across supply chains, currencies and geopolitics over decades, and refuses to recommend: the pieces are ambivalent by design (Critical Ambivalence). Its reading instruction: each piece is a tile in a composite metascenario that grows as contributions multiply. In For a General Theory of Simulations, Bratton classes scenario planning as institutionalized reflexive simulation (Reflexive vs. Recursive Simulation) whose telling helps cause or prevent its future; scenario fiction keeps the mechanism while dropping the client's purpose, a tension [Iris Carver](https://antikythera.wiki/people/iris-carver)'s Telos Project dramatizes.

## Appears in

- [Rendering Scenario Fiction](https://antikythera.wiki/work/substack/2026-01-20-rendering-scenario-fiction) (2026-01-20)
- [The Telos Project](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/hemstacks/telosproject) (2025-11-21)
- [Hemispherical Stacks](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/hemstacks) (2025-11-21)
- [For a General Theory of Simulations](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/theoryofsim) (2025-05-10)
- [Speculative Philosophy of Planetary Computation](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/spoc) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._