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.
More about our many projects Meet our staff
Upcoming events
- Martian Encounters: Imagining Alternate Non-Colonial Futures (Online) on Nov 12, 2024 MST |
- History of the Future: Annihilation on Nov 13, 2024 7:00 pm MST | Majestic Neighborhood Cinema Grill: Tempe
Download free books
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Listen to the Imagination Desk podcast
Apple Podcasts Spotify RadioPublic LibsynThis is a ten episode series hosted by Jenna Hanchey, Chinelo Onwualu, and Yvette Lisa Ndlovu that explores the work of ten African speculative fiction authors and imagining new futures for the continent.
In this conversation, Wole speaks about gods going on heists and how technologies hold the potential to bring us together in alternative histories and imagined futures.
In this conversation, Kemi takes us to galaxies far, far away, reimagining the hero’s journey through African-centered space opera.
In this conversation, Suyi talks to us about godpunk, Stranger Things, and how to support African and other marginalized writers...
In this conversation, Tlotlo talks with us about queerness, the dead, and how African surrealist stories illuminate the politics of African urban landscapes.