Megan Halpern

Imaginary College

Neal Stephenson looks off into the future.

Neal Stephenson

Incanter and Senior Magus

Neal Stephenson is an author of historical and science fiction, a technology consultant, a video game designer and the principal provocateur behind Hieroglyph. Answering Arizona State University president Michael Crow’s challenge to create alternatives to the dystopian visions that pervade our stories about the future, Neal is helping us pioneer new methods of radical collaboration between the storytellers who dream our future and the scientists and engineers that build it.

What is an Incanter, you ask? Learn more here.  

Image of Zoyander Street seated in a chair, holding a mug.

Zoyander Street

Dr. Zoyander Street (they/them) is a neuroqueer and disabled writer, researcher, and digital artist. They live and work in the “People’s Republic of South Yorkshire,” England, creating interactive media […]

A white man with silver hair and glasses smiles at the camera wearing a dark navy suit and tie and a white shirt.

David J. Staley

 David J. Staley is an Associate Professor of History, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Design and the Department of Educational Studies at The Ohio State University.  He is the author of Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education,

Aleks Romano

Aleks Romano is a human-centered designer, eternal reimaginer, and incurable bookworm. Embodying the literary tradition of Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin, Aleks creates experiential learning workshops that challenge

Sam Greenspan

Sam Greenspan is the creator and host of Bellwether, a podcast of speculative journalism. A radio reporter, producer, and artist with a knack for launching new shows, Sam was a founding member of 99% Invisible, NPR’s TED Radio Hour, USA Today’s The City, and others. […]

Sherri Wasserman

Sherri Wasserman constructs experiences at the intersections of physical, multimedia, and informational landscapes. She makes things for print, digital, and architectural/environmental spaces, creating content-rich exhibitions, […]

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is senior researcher at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, where he works on Climate Fiction, Quantum Fiction, and Medical Science Fiction within the Lifetimes framework.[…]

Cory Doctorow

“If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.”

Vandana Singh

Vandana Singh was born and raised in India and currently lives in the Boston area, where she is a professor of physics at Framingham State University, and a science fiction writer. Although her Ph.D. is in particle physics, in recent years she has […]

Kevin Bankston

Kevin Bankston is the Director of New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), where he works in the public interest to ensure that all communities have access to communications technologies that are both open and secure. He previously served as OTI’s Policy […]

Deji Olukotun - Credit Beowulf Sheehan

Deji Bryce Olukotun

Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of two novels and his fiction has appeared in five different book collections. His novel After the Flare won the 2018 Philip K. Dick special citation award, and was chosen as one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian […]

Kim Stanley Robinson

“Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.”

Suren Jayasuriya

Suren Jayasuriya is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. Before this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. […]

Madeline Ashby

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer, futurist, speaker, teacher, and immigrant living in Toronto. She has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, The Atlantic Council, the Center for Science and the Imagination, Changeist, […]

Eric Molinsky

Eric Molinsky is the creator and host of Imaginary Worlds, a podcast on the Panoply network about science fiction and other fantasy genres, which looks at how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. Episodes have ranged from interviews with authors like […]

Dennis Bonilla

Dennis Bonilla serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Variable Labs, Inc.With nearly two decades of technology experience, Dennis has helped create data visualization and collaboration systems for NASA and other U.S. agencies, and has supported committees […]

Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award-winning author of 30 novels and over a hundred short stories, an occasional public speaker, and her hobbies […]

Andrew Dana Hudson

Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, and futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, as well as over twenty short stories appearing in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Escape Pod, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and many more. His nonfiction has appeared in Slate, Jacobin, and more. […]

Daniel Fine

Daniel is an assistant professor of Digital Media in Performance at The University of Iowa. He has a co-appointment in Dance and is a core faculty member of the Public Digital Arts Cluster.

Boyd Branch

Boyd Branch, MFA is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre in ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where he teaches in the Interdisciplinary

Headshot of Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats is a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and

Megan Halpern

Megan Halpern is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science at Lyman Briggs and in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities.

Hannah Star Rogers

Hannah Star Rogers is an Art and Science Studies scholar, curator, and poet. She received her Ph.D. at Cornell University in Science & Technology Studies, where her research concerned the

Brenda Cooper

Brenda Cooper is the author of nine science fiction and fantasy books. Her most recent novels are POST (Espec Books, 2016) and Spear of Light (Pyr, 2016).  Her other works include Edge of Dark (Pyr, 2015), The Creative Fire (Pyr, 2012), and The Diamond Deep (Pyr, 2013) as […]

Erin Walker smiles at the camera while wearing a hat.

Erin Walker

Erin Walker is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems at Arizona State University. Her research uses interdisciplinary methods to improve the design and implementation

G. Pascal Zachary

Gregg Pascal Zachary tries to understand, document and represent technological change and imaginations about the future through a multi-dimensional lens. The first dimension involves reportage and storytelling about technoscientific complexity,

Phil Weaver-Stoesz

Phil Weaver-Stoesz is the Director of Catalyst Creative, a development company that specializes in science communication and impact. Phil works as a creator and facilitator: crafting immersive experiences, designing alternate

Dehlia Hannah

Dehlia Hannah, Ph.D. is a a curator and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art-Science Collaboration in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University and a

Manjana Milkoreit

Manjana Milkoreit is as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Milkoreit’s research integrates international relations scholarship and cognitive theory to study actor motivations and policy design

Margaret Atwood

A word after a word after a word is power.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative.

Bruce Sterling in Laser-Cut Hoodie

Bruce Sterling

“Don’t become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.”

Don Marinelli

“Trick suffering into becoming creativity – that’s magic.” &nbsp &nbsp

Kathryn Cramer

“The truth is a stranger…Not always welcome by daylight.”

Neal Stephenson looks off into the future.

Neal Stephenson

“See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places.”

Headshot of Corey Pressman in black and white.

Corey Pressman

Corey is a strategist, anthropologist, and futurist. As vice president of adaptive strategies at Fiction, he generates, manages, and works on projects with organizations and companies large and small to help them envision and enact […]

Gregg Zachary

Journalism Disruptor

Gregg Pascal Zachary tries to understand, document and represent technological change and imaginations about the future through a multi-dimensional lens. The first dimension involves reportage and storytelling about technoscientific complexity, presented in vernacular language.

Erin Walker smiles at the camera while wearing a hat.

Erin Walker

Digital Textbook Whisperer

Erin Walker is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems at Arizona State University. Her research uses interdisciplinary methods to improve the design and implementation of educational technology, and then to understand when and why it is effective. She is particularly interested in the intersection between personalized learning environments, cutting-edge interaction methods, and large-scale deployments of technology.

Daniel Fine

Daniel Fine tells stories by manipulating moving images, puppets, text, actors, inanimate objects, and interactive technology. By combining his life-long passion and more than two decades of experience in the art and business of making video, theatre, music, and fine art installation, Dan aspires to create original works that are multidisciplinary and technologically inventive.

Boyd Branch

Boyd Branch is Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Film, Dance, and Theatre. He has an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Digital Media from Arizona State University and an M.A. in Theatre Studies from the University of Utrecht, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Bruce Sterling in Laser-Cut Hoodie

Bruce Sterling

Visionary in Residence, Spring 2013

Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne.


Corey Pressman with microphone in hand, giving a talk.

Corey Pressman

Brainstorm Chaser

Corey is an anthropologist, strategist, magical thinker, and founder of Exprima Media. Exprima is a strategy and design company based in Portland, Oregon that partners with clients to envision, design, and strategize compelling and effective experiences. Corey regularly writes about and delivers presentations on a variety of topics including emerging digital media and interaction design.

Don Marinelli

Edutainment Wizard and Creative Conjurer

Don Marinelli, Ph.D., is the co-founder of the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), together with the late Randy Pausch of “The Last Lecture ” fame. Dr. Marinelli’s book, “The Comet and the Tornado” recounts the coming together of a drama professor and a computer scientist to create the unique educational vision that is the ETC.

Kathryn Cramer

Editor Extraordinaire

Kathryn Cramer lives in Westport, NY. She is an editor of the Hieroglyph project, inspired by Neal Stephenson and sponsored by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. Her story, “Am I Free to Go?” was published by Tor.com in December 2012.