A billion “black swan” events let loose
If I were writing science fiction now…
About the future of Earth…
I’d start with a representative of a Federation of distant planets standing in a room here, in a major US city, talking to a small group of Globalist heavy hitters.
The rep would be explaining that Earth could someday be a member of that Federation, obtaining many scintillating benefits, but first a very pernicious idea on Earth has to be eliminated.
That idea is FREEDOM.
The independent individual.
Not necessarily because freedom is so vile in and of itself, but because, when the setting is a vast interlocking group of worlds, freedom is unworkable.
The arch principle instead MUST BE…
CONTROL.
From the top.
And then I would go from there: