There was a time a decade or so ago when ‘urgent’ was the buzzword surrounding all new writing. From social realism to magical realism and theatre to poetry, every fresh text came laden with the epithet. But if there is one issue which the word can surely be appropriately attached to, it’s the current climate emergency. Seeking to use creativity to provide, if not an answer to the world’s urgent problems, then at least a hopeful perspective on them, Edinburgh Science Festival (in collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival) commissioned three writers with a background in sci-fi (Martin MacInnes, LR Lam and Eris Young) to work with leading scientists in response to the idea of living within our means on earth. The resulting short stories will be displayed in an exhibition, alongside the winning entries from the festival’s ‘Sci-Ku’ haiku competition for primary and secondary school children, while the trio take part in an event at National Museum Of Scotland.

Over the course of a day at the Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill, the writers collaborated with Professor Malcolm Macdonald, Scotland’s leading space scientist, and a team drawn from different disciplines. ‘The technical knowledge of the scientists was really helpful,’ says MacInnes. ‘They could say “well, hold on a minute, what about this?” And they could substantiate some of our intuitions. They were really humble and supportive. They weren’t rolling their eyes at our wilder ideas.’ 

Those ideas range from the visceral effects of microplastics on the body, to the life cycle of our bodies in relation to the planet, from the galvanising power of art as protest, to the awe-inspiring, colonising beauty of fungi. But what unites the three very different resulting short stories are their central themes of optimism and regeneration.

‘I think as science fiction writers, our job is to present possibilities,’ says Young. ‘There’s a lot of literature being created for young people that presents the world as broken. We’re placing a burden onto them they didn’t earn. It’s not their generation that created the problem. So I’d really rather inspire action. And I think hope inspires action.’ LR Lam agrees: ‘cynicism is easy; hope is harder. It’s easy to feel like we’ve already lost the climate change battle. We have missed some windows, but defeatism gets us nowhere.’

For MacInnes, the notion of hope extends to his wider motives for creativity. ‘I think if one was utterly convinced of the futility of everything, would one still be able to put pen to paper?’ he asks. ‘I’m doing this for something. There is a reader, there is a world out there, and there will continue to be in whatever form.’

Like other genres, science fiction sometimes attracts an unfair snobbery that assumes its purpose is to entertain rather than tackle issues. But all three writers here have sci-fi track records (MacInnes won the Arthur C Clarke Award for his novel In Ascension, while Lam’s novel Goldilocks was based on interviews with NASA’s head of life sciences) and had formative experiences with the genre that demonstrated to them its power and potential. ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin was one of my early introductions to literary science fiction,’ says Lam. ‘And Parable Of The Sower by Octavia Butler remains the more chilling and prescient near-future dystopia of our times, as well.’ 

MacInnes meanwhile discovered The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (which he describes as ‘deeply strange and uncanny’) while working at Waterstones. ‘Priest’s narrative voice is so crisp and clear, almost so clear that you can fall through it. He senses worlds below the surface. And I find that so exciting.’ For Young, it was Sofia Samatar’s short story ‘An Account Of The Land Of Witches’ that sparked their interest in the power of fantasy. ‘It appears at first blush to be a fantasy story set in a secondary world. But the deeper you go into it, the more you realise that it’s about the real world. It’s about borders and bodily agency and refugees. It is written in such a beautiful and economical way. When I read it, I was like, this is what a short story can be.’

Sci-Fi Futures, National Museum Of Scotland, Tuesday 8 April, as part of Edinburgh Science Festival.