The Future War Conference · a trade show set in the future
We have the technology.
Every exhibit on the floor is a product that does not exist — built entirely from ingredients that do. Each vendor presents from a declared year in the future, with a bill of materials that resolves to real parts, real papers, real TRLs — and a year that lives in a public ledger until it is graded. Useful fiction, with receipts. FICINT you can walk through.
Initial cohort: the useful-fiction community, war college futures programs, autonomy & defense primes' concept teams, underwriters, and the writers who got here first.
§1 — The Rule of Ingredients
Three clauses separate this from vaporware, science fiction, and every concept-car keynote ever given.
§1.1 — NONEXISTENCE
The product must not exist.
No prototypes, no MVPs, no "early access." If it ships, it exhibits somewhere else. The floor is reserved for the adjacent possible — the things one integration effort away.
§1.2 — PROVENANCE
Every subsystem must exist.
Each exhibit files a provenance sheet: the design decomposed to subsystems, each at TRL 6 or better, each traceable to a citable paper, a fielded system, or an orderable part number. The footnote is the genre's credibility engine. The bill of materials is the footnote, in atoms.
§1.3 — THE YEAR
The year is a forecast, and forecasts get graded.
"Set in 2031" is not set dressing — it is a staked claim that the product could exist by 2031. Every edition opens with the Retrospective Hall, where prior years' claims are scored in public.
§2 — Sample exhibit
What a booth files before it builds anything.
A worked example. The product below does not exist. Every row of it does. Tap a subsystem for its basis.
LONGWATCH — autonomous search-and-rescue picket, self-refueling, 90-day station
SET IN 2031
| Subsystem | Readiness | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Long-endurance maritime airframe (solar-hybrid) | TRL 8 | EXISTS |
BASIS: fielded HAPS/MALE platforms, multiple vendors; 60+ day continuous-flight demonstrations on record. Marinization is engineering, not research. | ||
| Autonomous aerial refueling / energy transfer | TRL 7 | EXISTS |
BASIS: autonomous probe-and-drogue and boom contact demonstrated operationally (carrier-based tanking program, 2020s); drone-to-drone transfer demonstrated at small scale. | ||
| Maritime distress detection (EO/IR + RF fusion) | TRL 9 | EXISTS |
BASIS: 406 MHz EPIRB/PLB constellation processing is decades old; shipboard-class EO/IR person-in-water detection models published and fielded in coast guard trials. | ||
| On-station autonomy under comms denial (SHADOW-default behavior stack) | TRL 6 | EXISTS |
BASIS: local-autonomy fallback with conservative defaults demonstrated in multiple swarm programs; the hard part is doctrine, not code — which is why it's on this floor. | ||
| LONGWATCH — the integrated product | TRL — | DOES NOT EXIST |
CLAIM: integrable by 2031. This row is the exhibit. This row is what gets graded. | ||
↑ every row: tap for basis. The last row is always the product, and the last row is always red.
§3 — The Ledger
The year on the badge is a Brier score waiting to happen.
Every claim filed on the floor enters the Ledger — a standing public registry, with resolution criteria written at filing, not at grading. Between editions the claims stay live: underwriters requote premiums, forecasters post odds, letters of intent accrue against the row. Each edition opens in the Retrospective Hall, where every expired claim is settled in public — exists, slipped, or vindicated — and exhibitors carry the calibration record on the badge. The conference is the settlement day; the Ledger runs all year. The costume party becomes a market the moment the forecast has a price.
| Class of 2028 (illustrative) | Claimed | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-party in-flight abort protocol | 2028 | EXISTS |
| Attrition-linked insurance notes, drone fleets | 2028 | EXISTS |
| Uncrewed tanker-to-tanker logistics loop | 2028 | SLIPPED → 2030 |
| Single-operator 200-drone control station | 2028 | EXISTS |
| Treaty annex distributed as signed config | 2028 | DOES NOT EXIST |
Sandbagging costs points. Scoring rewards the nearest defensible year, not the safest distant one — a claim set in 2040 earns almost nothing for coming true.
Resolution is pre-registered. A Resolution Council — forecasting professionals plus domain referees — grades each claim against the criteria filed with it, not against the vibe in the room. No claim ages without a written test for what "exists" means.
Demand clears early. Attendees file letters of intent conditional on existence — each one a row in the Ledger against the exhibit it prices. The floor doubles as a bookbuild for the adjacent possible: the missing market where buyers signal before anyone spends the NRE.
The honest oracle has a booth. An underwriter quotes premiums on exhibits, in-world. A priced policy on a fictional product is the most credible review in the building.
§4 — The floors
Three floors. One rulebook.
Floor A — Open
The Commercial Floor
Dual-use and civil exhibits: logistics, SAR, sensing, resilience. Public provenance sheets, press welcome, students free. Where the genre recruits its next generation.
Floor B — Cleared
The Annex
The buildable-but-unbuilt that should not be published with a recipe attached. Access-controlled, allied-audience sessions run with partner institutions. The provenance discipline is identical; the audience is not.
Floor C — Warnings
The Red Pavilion
Exhibits argued against: products whose ingredients exist and whose exhibitors make the case that they should stay unassembled. Useful fiction's original job — exposing futures in order to prevent them — given a booth, a bill of materials, and a straight face. Red sheets cite capability classes, never integration recipes; anything recipe-shaped belongs in the Annex. We have the technology. That is the warning.
§5 — Edition Zero
The proceedings ship before the conference does.
The first artifact is not a floor. It is a catalog: Catalog №0, a mail-order catalog of products that do not exist — every listing backed by a one-page provenance sheet, every year a claim opened in the Ledger, every order form a letter of intent conditional on existence. Twenty-four exhibits, print and web, launched at a one-day invitational.
Catalog №0 · First printing
Goods from the adjacent possible
Deliveries 2028 – 2040 · prices on request
Nothing in this catalog exists. Every part in it does. Each listing decomposes to orderable subsystems, cited to TRL, dated as a public claim.
☐ Order form enclosed — letter of intent, conditional on existence, entered to the Ledger
Paper beats venues. A catalog ships for the cost of a print run, not a convention center. Edition Zero proves the format — provenance sheets, graded years, conditional demand — before anyone rents a hall or sells a booth.
It is a book-shaped object. The genre's authors work in print. A catalog is a FICINT anthology wearing a Sears jacket: every listing is a story with part numbers, and the whole volume is the demand instrument. The 1893 Sears catalog built an empire publishing want before inventory; this one publishes want before existence.
Every page is a press hook. A product that does not exist — priced, sourced, and dated in public — is a headline per listing. The catalog recruits the first floor's exhibitors by showing them their booth in print.
§6 — Founding cohort
Built with the people who invented the genre, not around them.
- The useful-fiction / FICINT communityThe rulebook is yours — rules of the real, applied to hardware. The conference is the genre's trade-show form factor, and it doesn't happen without its authors in the room.
- War college & futures programsRetrospective Hall as a standing calibration exercise; student exhibits as coursework with a public grade.
- Primes' concept teams & autonomy startupsA venue where the concept deck is the product, the demand signal arrives before the NRE, and the forecast builds reputation instead of burning it.
- Underwriters & forecastersThe scoring layer needs professionals: proper scoring rules, priced premiums, resolution criteria written before the claims age.
- Writers, worldbuilders, production designersDiegetic prototypes are a craft. The booths are stories with part numbers, and somebody has to make them land.
- Publishers & pressCatalog №0 is a book-shaped object with a news hook per listing: a product that doesn't exist, priced, sourced, and dated in public.
§8 — The last row is red on purpose
Help us grade this claim.
We have the technology. What doesn't exist is the room. Seeking founding partners across the useful-fiction community, futures programs, the autonomy industry, publishing, and the forecasting world — co-designers of the rulebook, the Ledger, and Catalog №0. The conference is currently a provenance sheet. That's the point.
Get in touch — founding cohortdehnbostele@gmail.com · concept spec & rulebook draft available on request