What if?

What if? is the great SF writers' question.  We take a current situation and ask what if this disaster or development happened?  What if a key scientific discovery turns out to be completely wrong, or we make a new scientific discovery that turns everything we know on its head.

We can take what if? into asking about cultures too.  What if an alien civilization had this kind of religion or beliefs?  How would they react to humans coming into their world and wanting to exploit their religious icons?

SF is founded on some classic what if? questions.  What if FTL travel was possible?  What if we could communicate instantaneously from anywhere in the galaxy?  What if it was possible to travel vast distances between stars in weeks not aeons?  What if we could clone ourselves a thousand times and some of those clones went to war with each other?

I've played what if in the Panthera books.  Death Spiral asks what will happen when we start splicing genes together to "improve" people.  Death Song is about developing natural surveillance techniques.  In Eyemind I asked what if people started using artworks to programme people using subliminal messages.

What if? is a key SF writer's tool.  It challenges us to examine the present and imagine how the future would be changed by a key scientific discovery or shift in culture.