Imagination as a Power Generator: Literature and the Future of Energy

By Dr. Risda Nur Widia, M.Pd.

[OPINION]

Literature as a Laboratory for the Future

Literary works are often placed on the wrong shelf of knowledge. They are frequently regarded as entertainment, an escape from reality, or merely “fiction” that does not need to be accountable to the truth. It is therefore understandable that when a child asks a parent to buy a novel at a bookstore, the response is often: Don’t be silly. Just buy a textbook. Yet, without the parents realizing it, the history of science has recorded many great ideas that first came to life on the pages of literary works before emerging in laboratories or on the stages of scientific recognition.

Today, we should be concerned, for instance, about the issue of energy, because energy sources are among the factors that most profoundly determine the direction of our civilization. The reported blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, for example, can trigger increases in fossil-fuel prices, illustrating the consequences of humanity’s heavy dependence on natural resources. On top of that, the climate crisis demands that we search for new energy models that do not yet exist. This raises a question: What if we shifted our search for resources toward literature, rather than continuing to depend solely on nature? In this sense, literature can become the engine that designers of future prototypes need to formulate their very first questions.

This essay is based on the conviction that literary imagination deserves a seat at the table of discussions about the future of energy—not as a spectator, but as an initial designer. In short, literature can serve as a blueprint for imagining the energy of the future.

From Water to the Stars and Sunlight Beamed from the Sky

In 1874, Jules Verne wrote The Mysterious Island. In the novel, the engineer Cyrus Smith (Harding in the English translation) is asked what would happen if coal ran out. His answer is that water, separated into hydrogen and oxygen, would become an “inexhaustible source of heat and light.” He concludes with a sentence that scientists frequently quote today: Water will be the coal of the future. A century and a half later, green hydrogen produced through water electrolysis has become one of the pillars of the global energy transition.

H.G. Wells went even further. In The World Set Free (1914), he imagined energy being released from atoms and named the resulting weapon an “atomic bomb.” Physicist Leo Szilard read the novel in 1932. A year later, he formulated the idea of a nuclear chain reaction and later kept his patent secret because, as he reportedly explained, he knew what the consequences could be: He had already read Wells.

The clearest example—and perhaps the one most widely remembered—comes from Olaf Stapledon. His novel Star Maker (1937) depicts civilizations surrounding stars in order to capture their entire energy output. Physicist Freeman Dyson later developed a related concept in a paper published in Science in 1960, now known as the “Dyson sphere.” Dyson himself acknowledged that he had taken the idea from Stapledon, suggesting that “Stapledon sphere” might actually be a more appropriate name.

Isaac Asimov, in his 1941 short story “Reason,” depicts a space station collecting solar energy and transmitting it to planets through microwaves. In 1968, engineer Peter Glaser proposed a similar technical concept: solar-power satellites in orbit that would transmit energy to receiving antennas on Earth.

The idea did not remain on paper. In March 2023, a Caltech team, through its MAPLE experiment, successfully demonstrated wireless power transmission in space and directed part of the signal toward Earth. The amount of power was still very small and far from the scale of a power plant. Yet the distance between Asimov’s short story and this experiment—roughly eight decades—shows how long an imaginative idea can endure.

From these examples, we can see a recurring pattern. Literature does not provide formulas. It provides possibilities compelling enough for scientists to pursue. Fiction also continues to evolve. It asks not only where energy comes from, but also how societies should manage the transition. Kim Stanley Robinson, in The Ministry for the Future (2020), imagines a carbon currency and a global institution representing future generations. Here, literature becomes a laboratory for policy, not merely a laboratory for machines.

From the Sunan’s Staff to Elektra’s Body and Responsible Imagination

We do not need to look as far as Europe or America. In Manggarmas Village, Grobogan, Central Java, people know the legend of the Mrapen Eternal Flame. According to the legend, Sunan Kalijaga thrust his staff into the ground, causing a fire to emerge that never went out. The flame later became the source of the torch for Indonesia’s National Sports Week, or PON, beginning in 1981.

Earth science explains the phenomenon as a seepage of natural gas from beneath the ground. The legend, however, contains a kind of “map” of an energy source. It also carries an important lesson: the flame went out in 2020, was relit in 2021, and went out again in February 2026. What is described as “eternal” in a legend turns out to be limited in reality, much like fossil energy.

Modern Indonesian literature offers a bolder interpretation. In Supernova: Petir (2004), Dee Lestari introduces Elektra, a woman from Bandung whose body stores and channels electricity. She then uses this ability to establish an alternative healing business. Of course, no human being can function as a power plant. Yet the idea of the body as a source of energy has a counterpart in energy harvesting research, which seeks to collect energy from human movement, body heat, and heartbeat to power small devices.

This is where we can treat literature as a source of energy prototypes—not in the sense of equating a novel with an actual blueprint. Wells imagined atomic energy as a force that could liberate the world as well as a weapon capable of destroying it. Both sides have since become reality. Literature, therefore, does not merely offer visions of machines; it also provides warnings about the price that may have to be paid.

This is where literature possesses a value that cannot easily be replaced. Technical reports measure efficiency; stories test whether a technology is worth living with. Science and literature education, therefore, should begin speaking to one another from elementary school onward. A child who becomes accustomed to asking “what if?” through stories may become a future designer of energy technologies.

Verne, Wells, Stapledon, Asimov, the Mrapen legend, and Elektra all teach us one thing: the future of energy is not discovered only in laboratories. It is first imagined, written, and read. Together, these stories reveal different functions: literature provides the imagination of sources that do not yet exist and invites us to search for them, while science follows the traces of those possibilities until they become reality. (*)

About the Author: Dr. Risda Nur Widia, M.Pd., is a lecturer in the Elementary School Teacher Education Study Program at Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Yogyakarta. She is an Indonesian literary writer and researcher with a background in Indonesian Language and Literature. In 2015, she received the Taruna Sastra Award from the Language Development and Fostering Agency of Indonesia.

Editor: Latifah

*Editorial Note: This article is the work of the author. All content, views, interpretations, and information presented are the responsibility of the author. The editorial team is not responsible for the views or opinions expressed in the article beyond the editing process undertaken for publication.