Writing, reading, and reflecting on speculative fiction stories: Exploring healthpunk as a literary approach to nurturing transformative visions of future occupational realities

This theoretical article explores the potential of speculative fictional storytelling to foster new visions and realities in occupational science and occupational therapy through the lens of healthpunk, an emerging framework and literary approach that merges speculative fiction and futures thinking with a focus on health and its intersections with social and ecological challenges. Healthpunk derives from hopepunk, a new genre that emphasises the importance of hope and positive visions for the future amid social and ecological crises. Healthpunk facilitates the reimagination of conventional paradigms by balancing dystopian and utopian perspectives, highlighting contradictions and tensions in the world today, and catalysing imagination for sustainable and equitable futures. Occupational Punk Vol. 3: Everyday Odyssey is a collection of 14 healthpunk stories created by global participants—including students, clinicians, educators, and researchers—that explore future occupations amid societal, ecological, and technological disruptions. In this article, we discuss the ideas these stories articulate about future occupational realities in the context of changing healthcare, political, and ecological systems. We argue that healthpunk has potential to stimulate critical reflexivity and transformative thinking by disrupting established narratives, and to foster imaginative capacities and creative engagement with concepts like occupation and health in light of today’s complex challenges.