Climate Futures
How will imagination shape our collective, global response to the climate crisis? How can art and literature, merged with scientific and technological approaches, help us create solutions to increasingly urgent climate challenges? Our projects in the area of Climate Futures range from short fiction contests and public events to research projects and experiments in collaborative storytelling. We hope to bring empathy, creativity, and a diversity of voices to the fore, and to craft new stories that help us envision a multitude of possible futures shaped by climate change and our reactions to it.
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Volume III
A collection of short stories by writers from around the world, exploring the climate crisis and how human responses to it will shape the futures we will inhabit. Featuring winning stories from our 2020 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest.
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Book Launch: Climate Action Almanac (Online)
Tracing Pathways to Positive Climate Futures Zoom Webinar – Register This event starts at 1:00 pm Arizona time, which is 12:00 pm Pacific and 3:00 pm Eastern. When we think
Andrew Dana Hudson: Our Shared Storm
Speculative fiction writer and sustainability researcher Andrew Dana Hudson discusses his book, five interlocking novelettes exploring the possible realities of our climate future.
“Planetary Reversal: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Utopian Plan to Save the Planet”
A Lecture by N. Katherine Hayles Presented by ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination and the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict Rescuing the planet from climate chaos
Crafting Climate Futures: From Story to Policy (Online)
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow presents an opportunity for decisive global action amidst escalating climate chaos. Now, more than ever, we need narratives of positive climate futures
A sci-fi story of Earth’s renewal
EcoFutures Climate Justice Project
Today’s escalating climate chaos is intensified by global threats to democracy, violent backlashes to migration, and horrific biodiversity loss. Furthermore, environmental degradation is exacerbating existing inequalities, with poor and marginalized
Imagining Our Climate Futures (Online)
If we hope to achieve the global will and cooperation needed to meet the challenges of the climate crisis, we need stories of hope and transformation, not just disaster and
The Days After Tomorrow: Climate Fiction for the Future
Can we reimagine our relationship with nature and protect the future? How can we marshal our collective imagination to accelerate global transformations and move towards a sustainable way of life?
Workshop on Reimagining Climate Futures
Join the Center for Science and the Imagination, the Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG), and the UK Science and Innovation Network for a workshop that brings together innovative
Postcards from the Future
Create a digital postcard from the future, with concept art by João Queiroz.
Meet the Climate Imagination Fellows
Unlocking Our Climate Imagination
When we imagine our climate future, it’s easy to drift towards catastrophe, especially in view of this summer’s shocking examples of climate chaos—from floods and sinkholes to heat domes and
Moscow author’s story lands in climate fiction anthology
Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Idaho)
Indigenous Futurisms And Climate Fiction
Tom Maxedon Word podcast, KJZZ 91.5 public radio
Sarena Ulibarri and Ed Finn on Solarpunk
How Do You Like It So Far? podcast
Claire Vaye Watkins: Climate Writing (Online)
Join Claire Vaye Watkins, award-winning author of the climate fiction novel Gold Fame Citrus and the short fiction collection Battleborn, for a virtual reading and a conversation about climate writing.
Arizona State University’s Free Solarpunk Anthology is All About Optimistic Futures
Andrew Liptak, Tor.com
Cities of Light: A discussion on the impact of a solar future
Justin Spangenthal, The State Press
Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest 2020
What would our world look like if we actually respected and lived within planetary boundaries? We’re excited to announce our third global climate fiction short story contest. Learn more…
Climate Justice in India
Upcoming book project
17 Writers on the Role of Fiction in Addressing Climate Change
by Amy Brady, Literary Hub
Five ASU affiliates who are using their art to make change in their communities
by Chelsea Hofmann, The State Press
Can Climate Change Fiction Build Consensus, Empathy?
by Brooke Ruth and Mark Sauer, KPBS (San Diego)
When ‘Everything’ Is Changing, Stories Have A Role To Play
by Jason Sheehan, NPR Books
How sci-fi could help solve climate change
by Zoe Sayler, Grist
How sci-fi could help solve climate change
By Zoe Sayler Grist
In the face of climate chaos, writers find grief and hope
by Joey Eschrich, ASU Now
A New Cli-Fi Collection You Can Download For Free
by Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books
The Story of the American War with Omar El Akkad
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019, 6:00PM | Ventana Ballroom, Memorial Union In this year’s annual Imagination and Climate Futures Lecture, Omar El Akkad talks about how he came to write his debut novel, American War – the events that inspired it, the references buried throughout the text and the places he visited to research the book.
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Volume II
A collection of short stories by an international group of authors, drawn from our 2018 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, plus a foreword by our lead judge, Kim Stanley Robinson.
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A free book of science fiction from around the world about climate change, introduced by Kim Stanley Robinson
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Literally, Stories of Climate Change
by Joey Eschrich and Angie Dell, iMPACT magazine
Climate Change Nurtures a New Genre of Science Fiction
Steve Goldstein
KJZZ 91.5
Margaret Atwood, Prophet?
Ed Finn
Slate – Future Tense
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction
Features short stories from our 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest along with a foreword by science fiction legend and contest judge Kim Stanley Robinson, and an interview with renowned climate fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi.
Arizona State University unveils climate fiction anthology
Book features authors from six different countries alongside science fiction luminaries Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson
Writ in Water: Millimeters to the End of the World
By Joseph Horton, Ploughshares
Furman students author stories about the future and sustainability
Building Visions of Humanity’s Climate Future – in Fiction and on Campus
Contest challenges writers to imagine futures shaped by climate change
The Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative at Arizona State University invites writers to submit short stories that explore climate change, science and human futures for its first Climate Fiction Short Story Contest. The submission deadline is Jan. 15, 2016, and contest entry is free. The contest will be judged by science fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson.
Short Fiction Contest: Ocean Trash Write-Away
Every sea on Earth is plagued by massive amounts of trash. Refuse in the ocean kills hundreds of thousands of birds and marine mammals per year, and hazardous heavy metals bind to plastic particles and enter our food chain. The Ocean Trash Write-Away contest challenges writers to imagine solutions to this global challenge and write an inspiring short story set in a future where we’ve turned the tide on ocean trash.
September 17: Paolo Bacigalupi to imagine Southwest water futures at ASU
In Paolo Bacigalupi’s most recent science fiction novel, The Water Knife, Phoenix is dried up and California and Nevada are not too far behind. The millions of people who rely on the Colorado River to survive are not only thirsty, but fighting for their lives. It’s a compelling story that captures a not-so-distant future. Will Phoenix eventually collapse? Will the river dry up?
Margaret Atwood, ASU collaborators explore climate futures
What might a world without oil look like? How will human societies cope with massive changes in the Earth’s climate? How will we adapt to survive the future? And how can storytelling and art — alongside science and technology — help us confront the challenge of climate change?
An Interview With Margaret Atwood
Climate fiction, or “cli fi,” can be a dreary genre. Storytellers like to make a grim business of climate change, populating their narratives with a humorless onslaught of death, destruction, drowned monuments, and starving children. Margaret Atwood is the conspicuous exception, somehow managing to tackle the subject, including these familiar elements, with deadpan wit and an irreverent playfulness, making it both more interesting and believable. The flood is coming, her MaddAddam trilogy promises, but there is hope.
Author Margaret Atwood to discuss creative writing, science at ASU
This article originally appeared in ASU News. Internationally renowned novelist and environmental activist Margaret Atwood will visit Arizona State University this November to discuss the relationship between art and science,
ASU, NGA to address national security risks of climate change
Arizona State University was selected for a competitive, five-year award of $20 million by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to launch a research partnership, effective June 1, to explore approaches for anticipating and mitigating national security risks associated with climate change.