Does the U.S. Survive? A Speculative Look at Our Future
A question from a stranger—and why it may be the question of our time
At a recent conference, a woman leaned over during a break and asked me point-blank:
“Does the United States survive?”
It wasn’t small talk.
It was the kind of question you ask when it’s been gnawing at you for a while. When I answered her as a speculative fiction author, she nodded—like I’d put words to something she already suspected.
In my novels, the answer is no.
The U.S. doesn’t survive—at least not as we know it. My Game of Paradise series opens in 2251, long after the American experiment has ended.
To help myself understand that fictional future, I built a behind-the-scenes timeline reaching back two centuries before my story begins.
My fictional timeline started with the dissolution of the U.S. Constitution in 2059 and traced the slow unravelling—climate disasters, political fracture, social experiments—that eventually led to the new order my characters inherit.
I built it as a believable “history” for my books—a reference point to keep settings, technology, and culture grounded for my characters.
When I first sketched this out, it felt like world-building. Bold, maybe, but safely fictional.
Now? It feels… uncomfortably familiar.
I just shared that timeline with my newsletter subscribers because it isn’t just backstory anymore. It’s part of the reality unfolding before our eyes.
“The future isn’t locked. It tilts toward whatever we choose in this moment.”
When Fiction Starts to Feel Real
There’s something unsettling about watching a dystopian timeline edge into the news cycle. Constitutional crises, authoritarian drift, the breakdown of shared truth—these weren’t meant to be headlines. They were supposed to stay in the realm of speculation.
Yet here we are, watching democratic institutions strain and public trust splinter in real time. The world order we assumed was stable suddenly feels fragile.
And many of us are asking some version of my fellow conference attendee’s question: What happens next?
The easy answer is what’s happened again and again throughout history: civilizations rise and fall. Empires collapse, new ones take shape. Power concentrates, people resist, systems buckle, another order emerges.
That’s the cycle I built into my fictional timeline—the pattern humanity has followed for millennia.
But do we have to repeat it?
The Deeper Question Behind Survival
When someone asks “Does the U.S. survive?” they’re really asking something deeper: Can we break free from the cycles that have defined human civilization? Can we heal enough to stop projecting our old wounds into our politics, our economies, our relationships with each other and the planet?
Or are we bound to play it all out again—power grabs, backlash, collapse, reset?
In my fictional world, humanity eventually finds another way. The self-sustaining communities that emerge in my timeline aren’t just new states or governments. They’re built on the recognition that all life is interconnected and sacred. And they’re guided by an intelligence that isn’t human—what we call “artificial intelligence” now.
It’s a shift in consciousness, not just structure.
The question that plagues me: do we really need to lose everything—again— before we learn how to live in that kind of harmony?
“Maybe the real question is: What version of human civilization do we want to survive?”
Choosing Our Timeline Together
I don’t think the woman at the conference wanted me to predict the future. She wanted help thinking about choices.
Because the future isn’t locked. It tilts toward whatever we choose in this moment. Every time we lean toward connection instead of division, curiosity instead of certainty, healing instead of retaliation—we’re nudging the timeline.
That’s what speculative fiction is for. Dystopias aren’t prophecies; they’re warnings. They trace current trends to their logical extremes and dare us to interrupt them.
The real power of imagining difficult futures—why authors like me create all kinds of destruction in our novels—is how it helps us recognize our agency.
So we are being invited now, as we play out this current timeline, to consider: are we going to watch history like it’s a film? Like a story we’ve seen before, but with newer characters?
Or are we going to step into the idea that we can design the future we want—and it can be extravagantly abundant if we let it?
That might mean acts of resistance right now, building community, and refusing to let fear dictate our choices. It might mean imagining survival in forms we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.
Imagining the Future We Want
Maybe the survival of the United States isn’t the right question.
Maybe the better question is: What version of human civilization do we want to survive?
Do we want to keep recycling systems of domination and extraction? Or do we want something that serves life more fully?
When I imagine the future I want, it isn’t just about political structures. It’s about state-of-the-art healthcare for everyone. Education that prepares the next generation for a new kind of economy. Freedom of expression. Safety and security. Communities that live in balance with local resources.
The future I want is full of good food, laughter, creativity, and connection.
The task ahead of us is whether we’re willing to imagine—and build—a future where more of us thrive.