For more details about the contest: https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1872
From the NATO site:
Science fiction, while often discredited by dint of its creative and at times outrageous character, holds real added value for research purposes. Not only does science fiction influence the present by projecting inventions (i.e. headsets, mobile phones and tablets), science fiction can leverage the wisdom of the crowd effect: when several authors “see” a similar future, such a future becomes more likely. As such, science fiction has the power of making ideas acceptable. It can entertain a wider public, which under normal circumstances, might not entertain certain ideas, thereby broadening mindsets and fostering critical thinking. Of course, the precondition to this is that science fiction be not fantastical, but is rooted in evidence. (Hence the term FICINT, fictional intelligence.)
Harnessing these benefits, science fiction has been instrumentalized by military organizations in the United States and France to increase preparedness, train critical thinking, and even spot trends in technology and geopolitics. (For example, the idea of Russia attacking Ukraine appeared in Russian science fiction in the 1990s).
And later on their page:
- Remuneration: €500 EUR.
- Deadline for submissions: 15 November 2023 – but the sooner the better.
- Publication is scheduled for May 2024.
Didn’t NASA also announce something like this in the last couple of months? I couldn’t find anything online but I swear I saw something about NASA promoting a similar initiative recently.
