Fiction predicted the crises politicians still deny
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- BBC's 'The Rapture' depicts a UK engulfed by heatwave and aired as the country recorded its highest-ever June temperature, with two further heatwaves and French wildfires following by late July, Williams writes
- Apple TV's 'Criminal Record' season 2 opens with a protest outside the Ministry of Defence that turns deadly when the far right breaches a lax police cordon — conceived before the Southport riots, asylum-hotel arsons, and Elon Musk's UK civil-war comments became regular news
- Liz Jensen's 2009 novel (which the BBC adapted as 'The Rapture') anticipated the climate crisis roughly two decades ahead, with Williams calling novels uniquely equipped to hit the future 'on the nose' because they aren't written by committee
- Eleanor Catton's 'Birnam Wood' and Naomi Alderman's 'The Future', both published in 2023 with ideas germinating around 2020, independently captured a 'billionaire death wish' Williams says predated tech tycoons' public post-humanist outlook
- Politicians remain the only group denying these futures, still debating net-zero costs and remaining North Sea crude 'while in the middle of a wildfire,' Williams argues, calling the persistence of that 'averted gaze' the truly remarkable development
- The Daily Mail's reviewer criticized 'The Rapture' for portraying Christianity as 'a bastion of anti-science nutjobs'; Williams counters that religion is merely 'a garnish' to the show's central atmosphere of engulfing heat
Why it matters: Williams' column highlights a widening cultural gap: fiction writers and TV producers have built accurate models of climate breakdown, far-right violence, and oligarch detachment, while political leaders maintain what she calls 'that averted gaze' — still arguing about net-zero costs during wildfires. The cost of that denial is policy lag on crises already unfolding, from the UK's record June heat to repeated far-right unrest across Britain.
