When the Imaginative Becomes Real! Future Anticipation as Depicted in Some Cyberpunk and Thriller Novels

Imagination is one of the mental faculties that distinguishes humans from other creatures. This explains why it has captured the attention across ages. Technological and scientific inventions witnessed by the world since the late twentieth century and the first quarter of the tewnty-first century are an optimum example of the power of imagination as a human peculiarity. Likewise, the term ‘Imagination’ is a cornerstone in the literary theory, as exemplified in S.T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, through which he presents his theory of imagination. Coleridge divides ‘Imagination’ into two forms: ‘Primary Imagination’, shared by all people, ‘Secondary Imagination’, which is restricted to people with artistic genious. Although creative works are related to Secondary Imagination, but Coleridge asserts that both forms are integrated. Thus, This study aims to examine how imagination enabled some novelists in the past to anticipate the future, which is now the present/reality.This study is structured on two mindhunting global issues: the dominance of technology-embodied in the Internet and its applications- over all aspects of life, and the second is related to the biological warefare (ex., COVID-19), which has sent millions of people into death. The selected novels are William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), a cyperpunk novel, and Dean Koontz’s thriller novel, The Eyes of Darkness (1981). Based on Coleridge’s theory of imagination, the study concluded that fiction with its diverse genres as cyberpunk and thriller novels can reflect present reality and anticipate the future as well.