The National Infrastructure Commission for Wales, in conjunction with the Institute of Welsh Affairs, recently published an anthology of stories and essays, Imagining Wales in 2100. My immediate reaction, before even looking at it, was to think of questions raised by the historian Gwyn A Williams’ 1985 book When Was Wales?. Williams argued that Wales only exists because the Welsh invented it and that the Welsh only exist because they invented themselves – processes repeated over and over under different historical contexts and conditions.
Therefore, both the demographic make-up of the Welsh and the geographical shape of Wales in the Roman period were very different to how they were in the Middle Ages, and were different again during the 19th-century heyday of the British Empire. This hasn’t just been a simple historical progression, with the country and population uniformly changing at the same rate. It’s a story of uneven development that has often left different Welsh regions feeling like different time zones altogether.
Welsh temporal anomalies
You don’t have to be Doctor Who to be aware that time works differently in Wales than in most other developed countries. For instance, last month the newspaper WalesOnline sent an email newsletter linking to its article on the introduction of electric trains on the Valley Lines of South Wales. It was titled ‘The 20th century has just arrived at platform one. We apologise for the delay’.
A tragic example of a Welsh temporal anomaly, also train-related, occurred on 21 October. What was reported as the first head-on collision in the UK this century happened between Talerddig and Llanbrynmair on the largely single-track Cambrian line connecting the west coast to Shrewsbury. A man in his sixties subsequently died, and 15 people were injured.
This fatal accident already has its own Wikipedia page highlighting similarities to the Abermule train collision, in which 17 people died. It took place on the same line over a hundred years earlier, on 26 January 1921. It’s difficult to avoid concluding that time has stood still in mid-Wales. Is there reason to think the Cambrian line will be any different to today in 2100? What’s to prevent another collision in the 22nd century?
Cardiff in 2100
One place in Wales that we can be confident will be different from today in 2100 – perhaps even ready to enter the 22nd century – is the Welsh capital. One of the stories in Imagining Wales in 2100 is ‘Cardiff in 2100’ by Peter Madden, Professor of Practice in Future Cities at Cardiff University. The narrator, Artificial Intelligence 37982455CYM, describes the events of Day 67, 2098 in a Caerdydd that is criss-crossed by canals, full of ‘brightly painted canoes and solar-powered ferries’. It’s a city that has learned to live with the waves, not fight them.
However, the intervening years seem to have gone badly elsewhere, as we learn from an allusion to aerial drone catastrophes in 2041 and 2063. Rather alarmingly, we are told that “there aren’t so many young people anymore”, and it’s more common to see humans who have passed the 100-year mark, cycling around in their robotic exoskeletons and starting new university courses. Humans have been allowed to partner legally with AIs since 2042. Oh, brave new world!
The fine line between utopia and dystopia
Madden’s story is a good example of how there’s often a fine line between utopia and dystopia in science fiction. While more possibilities for older people would be welcome, the idea of a society without young people simply feels wrong. Canals in Cardiff might be fun, but there’s a worrying sense that the city has become a gated community for the privileged, protected from the devastation elsewhere.
Some of the other stories have similar connotations. In Piotr Swiatek’s ‘Wales: a beacon of regenerative wellbeing’, Wales has survived the global climate crisis of 2035 to become a global leader in bioregional governance. There are many excellent ideas in this vision. But the response of anyone outside the capital to reading that “just last year, flash floods devastated parts of the Ystwyth bioregion” will be to think that nothing much has changed, in terms of most of the country being left exposed to extreme weather events.
In ‘Valley 2100’ by Beau W Beakhouse, “modularity” has transformed Newport into “an algorithm of perfect city planning, maximised contentment and well-apportioned leisure”. Algorithms have many potentially useful applications, but contentment is a product of meaningful social relationships between human beings.
The ones who walk away
Ursula Le Guin’s short story ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ describes how the maximised contentment of the apparently utopian city of Omelas is actually dependent on the continuous torture of an imprisoned child. Crucially, this torture isn’t a secret, but is simply ignored and not talked about by those who are happy to enjoy the good life in Omelas.
However, every now and again people – usually young people – decide they can’t live under those conditions, and choose to walk away. The narrator tells us that the “place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness”. But they seem to know where they’re going. In other words, if any form of utopia is to be found that does not immediately collapse into somebody else’s dystopia, then it will be found through dissent rather than manufactured consent.
Dissent in Imagining Wales in 2100 is provided by Heledd Melangel’s ‘Prison 2100: A Mega Prisons Eco-dystopia’. This beautifully written story is told from the point of view of a young Welsh prison inmate. She’s being moved into a new cutting-edge women’s mega-prison in Wales, HMP Gwenllian, located in remote mid-Wales.
Mostly underground, the prison has individual padded cells without windows, emotional-support AI bots, hydroponic farming, and a recycling plant. This torture takes place out of sight, but everyone knows about it and accepts it in the name of a modern, progressive Wales moving confidently into the 22nd century. This story hints that, however algorithmically content and bio-regionalised parts of Wales might be in 2100, the best hope for the future still lies with those who choose to walk away.
When will Wales be?
Imagining Wales in 2100 should be applauded for making a start on thinking about futures in which Wales might finally come into its own. Its most productive legacy would be if it inspired further speculative visions of Wales, written from a greater range of perspectives that include dissenting and counter-cultural voices.
Yet it isn’t enough simply to imagine the future. In a recent opinion piece for the online magazine Bella Caledonia, Mike Small emphasised the need for those in Scotland seeking a more sustainable and socially just future to start building their own counter-institutions. This includes alternative democratic systems such as assemblies, networks of banking and savings collectives, and local food systems that create resilient regional produce.
Do we want to see a radically different country in Wales, where everyone has an opportunity to participate fully and equally in the 22nd century? If so then we, too, need to set up exactly the same kinds of alternative systems.
How do you imagine Wales in 2100 to be?
