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Anna Howells introduces 2100: A Health Odyssey, the science-fiction writing competition breathing life into the discussion about healthcare, past, present and future.

He stands up and walks around his desk, placing a sweaty hand on my lower back as he opens the office door to indicate it is time to go. “The Oracle represents the most sophisticated healthcare algorithm ever created. Trust Her.”

It seems to me the Writing the Future science fiction prize, and the beautiful, eerie stories, mess with our minds because they say ambiguous things about the gap between the present and the future. Is this gap vast, with futures yet untold unfolding in unpredictable directions? Or is this gap porous, and shrinking?

I was told an uplifting story the other day that made me reflect about the conversations we have. Or more accurately, the conversations we don’t have, and what this might mean for our health. It was about a lady, not originally from the UK. She was coming on her own, almost every other day, to her local GP in south London – invariably without an appointment. 

As the writer of 'Burnout', one of the six stories shortlisted for Writing the Future, I've been asked to describe my experience of writing for the competition, and the inspiration behind my story. “Write what you know,” beginner authors are often advised. Well, it so happens that I work in primary care in the UK, and I enjoy reading – and occasionally writing – science fiction.

I heard about Writing the Future through my friend Kate, who works in health. "You like writing," she said. "Why don’t you enter this?" A short story competition about healthcare in 2100? It was an intriguing topic: 83 years from now, what kind of world would our descendants inherit?

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." - Steve Jobs 

Having been part of the panel judging the splendid recent Writing the Future competition, I've been asked to pen a few words about the writer's job; specifically how the world 'out there' gets filtered through the writer's imagination so that it arrives 'down there' on the page.

Writing the Future is a vanity exercise. A piece of ephemera only of interest to the eccentric, whimsical, or those with far too much time on their hands. I don’t agree; and having come up with the idea originally, I’m not sure you’d expect me to.

When Richard Taunt invited me to do this, I should have given him a warning. That my least favourite forms of fiction are science fiction and fantasy. That when it comes to the future, I am right there with the American baseball star Yogi Berra – to whom is often attributed the famous quote: "Never make predictions, especially about the future."​