Six years ago the German military launched Project Cassandra, a programme designed to predict disasters and black swan events by getting novelists, poets and hacks to write stories about them. What could possibly go wrong? After all, everyone knows writers are perfect in a crisis.
Admittedly Cassandra’s operational span has coincided so far with an unforeseen pandemic and an unforeseen war. Although to be fair the ministry’s in-house writers were probably still arguing about tone and leitmotifs and the pacing of the third act while all this was going on. You can’t rush the process.
