Speculative Science Communication is a methodology that borrows the imaginative power of science fiction so that ordinary citizens, not only experts, can rehearse ahead of time how they will live alongside science and technology that doesn't exist yet. Rather than promoting or opposing any given technology, it treats science-fiction stories and prototypes as sites for dialogue, so each person can choose their own comfortable distance from a new technology instead of having that distance decided for them by hype or fear. The aim is a society where no one feels trapped by technologies they had no part in shaping. Ryu Miyata is the science communicator and sci-fi prototyper who has developed this methodology systematically and put it into practice. He leads the science communication team at Araya, Inc., serves as science communicator for Japan's Moonshot Goal 1 (Kanai Project), and produces Neu World, a sci-fi × neuroscience project built on this method. He is also a visiting researcher at Keio University's Science Fiction Research and Development Center.

Speculative here doesn't mean forecasting. Sci-fi prototyping translates a future that researchers can already imagine — a technology, a social arrangement — into a story, so people can effectively try living with it before it exists. Science fiction isn't used as a tool of persuasion, steering people toward a conclusion someone else has already decided on; it's treated as shared ground for dialogue and role-play that can hold several possible futures at once, failures included.

A second, related idea is finding the right distance. No single cutting-edge technology is the right answer for everyone, so the goal isn't to champion it or oppose it, but to build a space where each person can decide, for themselves, how much of it — and in what form — belongs in their life.

New technologies are often implemented faster than society can debate them. When people are only ever offered a binary — accept it or reject it, with no real say in between — that's where a sense of being trapped sets in. Since starting this work in 2017, the guiding aim has been a society where no one feels trapped: one with real alternatives, where even the paths not taken still make sense in hindsight. Speculative Science Communication starts the conversation while a technology still exists only as a story, to add options before that sense of being trapped can take hold.

In practice, this takes a few concrete forms:

This definition isn't finished. It keeps being tested and updated through practice — through Neu World, through collaborations with researchers and creators, through every new event and essay built on sci-fi prototyping. Alongside growing this work at home, this English page is meant as an opening: a way to start building dialogue, slowly, with science communicators and researchers abroad working on similar questions.