Veterans Imagination Project

Using the tools of narrative foresight to explore post-service career futures

Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination brings writers, artists and other creative thinkers into collaboration with scientists, engineers and technologists to reignite humanity’s grand ambitions for innovation and discovery.

The center serves as a network hub for audacious moonshot ideas and a cultural engine for thoughtful optimism. We provide a space for productive collaboration between the humanities and the sciences, bring human narratives to scientific questions, and explore the full social implications of cutting-edge research.

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An illustration of a globe with representations of solar energy, forests, factories, and other technologies.

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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A collection of science fiction stories, art, and essays exploring how the transition to solar energy will transform cities; catalyze revolutions in politics, governance, and culture; and create diverse futures for human communities. Our contributors imagine solar futures in four U.S. cities: Chicago, San Juan, Portland, and San Antonio.

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A collection of science fiction stories, art, and essays exploring human futures powered by solar energy, with an upbeat, solarpunk twist. What will it be like to live in the photon societies of tomorrow? How will a transition to clean, plentiful energy transform our values, markets, and politics?

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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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In this novella, award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Elizabeth Bear and artist Melissa Gay imagine a near future informed by visceral VR simulations to catalyze positive change.

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Cover for Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A collection of space Futures. Edited by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich. Photo of the inside of a futuristic space station. A ship and planet can be seen outside the window.

Why should we go to space? Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities takes on the challenge of imagining new stories at the intersection of public and private—narratives that use the economic and social history of exploration, as well as current technical and scientific research, to inform scenarios for the future of the "new space" era.

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Listen to the Imagination Desk podcast

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This episode of Imagination Desk features Fabrice Guerrier. In this conversation, Fabrice discusses how he uses imagination, and how imagination can be used to create better social futures.

This episode of the Imagination Desk features Laura Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation for 2015-2019, discussing how imagination informs her work and how it is used in both the poetry community and Indigenous communities. 

This episode of Imagination Desk features Corey Pressman. In this conversation, Corey discusses what applied imagination means to him, his work, and the future.

This episode of Imagination Desk features Lisa Kay Solomon. In this conversation, Lisa discusses different applications of design thinking and futures thinking, and incorporating creativity and imagination into interdisciplinary fields and everyday life.

Notes for the podcast

In this season finale BDJ talks with guests about the shortcomings of AI, the perils of deploying it too early, and what gives them hope for the future of AI.  Guests: Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) Kade Crockford (@onekade) August Cole (@august_cole) Ellio...

Notes for the podcast

In this episode, Brian David Johnson talks with guests about their favorite AI's and non-typical AI's.  Guests: Laura Moy (@lauramoy) Rashida Richardson https://www.rashidarichardson.com Tim Fernholz (@TimFernholz_ Alida Draudt https://www.alidadraudt....