If Fremantle wins the AFL grand final on Saturday – one of the detailed speculative fiction predictions in my novel, The Capricorn Sky, may come true.
Speculative fiction is hard. Orwell’s 1984 mis-predicts – it’s not the authoritarian state, but those bastard children of the neo-libs, the tech bros, who have their algorithmic jackboots on our throats (sorry George). And we’re not all blissed out on the drug soma as per Brave New World, but floating on dopamines, cheaply manufactured within our glands while scrolling Tik Tok and Insta, thanks to those pesky algos again. Not to mention the perpetual on-line gambling rush (sorry Aldous).
Our Government’s latest intergenerational report forecasting Australia 40 years hence is likely unreliable spec fic too because 40 years hence is too far away to predict with any accuracy, especially as the globe heats up.
Back to my own prediction: in The Capricorn Sky there’s a tense scene where two-armed standover men, Mr Mullen and Mr Chough, crash a corporate box owned by Phipps Inc – an Indigenous led company run by the Phipps family which pumps terrawatts of solar energy through to Asia. In the novel, set in 2134, Freo is playing West Capricornia (CapWest) in the finals and are looking good for their second Premiership in 108 years according to the book. Which Freo won for the first time, by my spec fic reckoning, in 2026! Fingers crossed.
Watching the game are renewable energy mogul and security agent, Madrigal Phipps, her boy Todd and family members including some cousins from CapWest , up in the Kimberley.
Let me set the scene:
The noise of the huge crowd in Perth Stadium is “hammering the glass windows” of the corporate box, high above the game.
On the field below, the Dockers football team swarmed. The exchanges from the interchange benches were fast and furious. Two players were tilted back in chairs, getting fresh oxygenated blood, supplied by matched blood types in their cheer sqwad, and were being worked on by physios. In the centre there was a bounce and the 2.5-meter ruckman Acton Yards smashed the ball with his weighted glove high into the field towards CapWest’s zone.
“Wow, mum,” said Todd, “What a whop!”
The ball was intercepted by a CapWest back who kicked it hard with his leg augment, a length of boot that used much the same tek as Madrigal’s interPlanetary storm skin, sending the ball diagonally across the field to another CapWest mid-fielder who went for a sprint and was brought down by Freo players.
“Oof!” said Todd
But it’s not Freo’s fault the club takes so long to win a second flag in the 108 years after 2026. It is written in The Capricorn Sky, that from the late 2060’s and 70’s, the climate finally catches up with humanity big time, caused by the mega-litres of ocean moisture that global heating is currently pumping into the atmosphere. Hot wet air that supercharges storms and floods and destroys coastlines.
In The Capricorn Sky there’s a decadal global catastrophe in the 2070s called The Grief followed by The Blend when millions of refugees pour into Australia from the uninhabitable tropics.
Footy fixtures, along with normal life, become unfixed until humanity recovers from the disasters.
Whether a version of The Grief happens within the ambit of the modestly optimistic Intergenerational Report, or later in the early 22nd century, is moot. There’s a good chunk in the report that speculates on the increased fiscal expenditures as parts of Australia become uninsurable, and the crashing of our GDP if mean global temp reaches +3 degrees above the preindustrial level – all fair calls. But I doubt, for example, the prediction in the report that female life expectancy will hit 90-years old by 2066. Let’s be realistic. Mean global temps are rising much faster than predicted, Around 35000 people died in the European heatwave of 2026. Australia is hot already and heat takes out the vulnerable elderly.
But in the meantime, let’s enjoy the now – and the predictable fixtures.
Go Freo!
And please cut sponsorship ties with Woodside while you’re at it. We need to turn the gas taps off.